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Diocese of Breda

*Dioecesis Bredana*

Bisdom Breda
Diocese of Breda; Dioecesis Bredana; Bisdom Breda
	Interior of Sint Antonius Cathedral
	Coat of arms
Location
Country	Netherlands
Ecclesiastical province	Utrecht
Metropolitan	Archdiocese of Utrecht
Statistics
Area	3,368 km2 (1,300 sq mi)
Population; - Total; - Catholics	(as of 2020); 1,149,000; 418,200 (36.4%)
Parishes	34
Members	25,000 (2.2%)
Information
Denomination	Roman Catholic
Rite	Latin Rite
Cathedral	H. Antonius van Padua, Breda
Current leadership
Pope	Francis
Bishop	Johannes Wilhelmus Maria Liesen
Metropolitan Archbishop	Cardinal Wim Eijk
Map
	; Location of the Diocese of Breda in the Netherlands
Website
	www.bisdombreda.nl

The Diocese of Breda (Latin: Dioecesis Bredana) is a Latin Church diocese of the Catholic Church in Breda, the Netherlands.

Description

Until 1801 this territory was part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Antwerp, a diocese suppressed by the Concordat of 1801 (when Antwerp was annexed to France). Breda was then erected as an Apostolic Vicariate in 1803.

The diocese was erected on March 14, 1853, with Johannes van Hooydonk being made its first bishop. The current bishop is Johannes Wilhelmus Maria Liesen. The current cathedral is Saint Anthony of Padua (in Dutch: H. Antonius van Padua) located in the center of Breda.

Its canonical territory consists of the province of Zeeland and part of the province of North Brabant and is subdivided into 112 parishes.

Former Bishops of the Diocese are:

Johannes van Hooydonk (1853 – 1867)
Johannes van Genk (1868 – 1874)
Henricus van Beek (1874-1884)
Petrus Leyten (1885 – 1914)
Pieter Hopmans (1914 – 1951)
Jozef Baeten (1951 – 1961)
Gerardus de Vet (1962 – 1967)
Hubertus Ernst (1967 – 1992)
Martinus Petrus Maria Muskens (1992 – 2007)
Hans van den Hende (2007 - 2011)
Johannes Wilhelmus Maria Liesen (2011–present)

The Diocese numbers 136 secular and 159 religious priests and comprises 356 male and 1080 female religious. The number of church goers is nearly 25,000 or 2.2% of the population.

During the 1960s, the relatively strong demarcation between the Catholic south on one side and the Calvinist west and north on the other side of the Netherlands started to diminish. In the second half of the twentieth century a rapid secularization and strong loss of religious affiliation have taken place in North Brabant.

In western North Brabant (Diocese of Breda) is the number of people associating themselves with Catholicism strongly decreased, only 52 percent of the West Brabantians identify as Roman Catholic in 2006. Church attendance is low with only 1 percent of the West Brabantian population visiting churches.^[1] North Brabant is mostly Roman Catholic by tradition and still uses the term and certain traditions as a base for its cultural identity, though the vast majority of the population is now largely irreligious in practice. Research among Dutch Catholics in 2006 shows that only 27% of the Dutch Catholics can be regarded as a theist, 55% as an ietsist / agnostic and 17% as atheist.^[2]

References

^ Kerncijfers 2006 uit de kerkelijke statistiek van het Rooms-Katholiek Kerkgenootschap in Nederland, Rapport nr. 561 oktober 2007, Jolanda Massaar- Remmerswaal dr. Ton Bernts, KASKI, onderzoek en advies over religie en samenleving
^ God in the Netherlands' (1996-2006), by Ronald Meester, G. Dekker, ISBN 9789025957407