Cayes, Diocese of (Cajesensis), in the Republic of Haiti, suffragan to Port-au-Prince. The actual ecclesiastical province of Port-au-Prince (the archdiocese and the four suffragan dioceses of Cap Haitien, Gonaives, Cayes, and Port-de-Paix) dates only from the reorganortenyorel tobpeonp io" ks comemorands of falifburi wie fie Sans this prefet leeme wbiche sree, Pore hom come to woekine the, Republic the reed yale and he that the Faith was planted in this part of Santo
Domingo towardstheend of the fifteenth century, and despite the many political and social vicissitudes of the island has never been quite extinguished there. The jurisdiction of the Bishop of Cayes (Monseigneur Jean-Marie-Alexandre Morice, elected 4 March, 1893) extends over the whole civil Department of the South (Werner, Orb. Terr. Cath., Freiburg, 1890), and his episcopal see is at Cayes (commonly spoken of as Aux Cayes), a seaport in the extreme south-western part of the island. This diocese is divided into 25 parishes containing altogether a population of 500,000, almost without exception Catholics by profession. According to the “ Annuaire pontifical” for 1907, there were 95 churches or chapels in the diocese, with 35 secular priests.
The Catholic progress of Cayes since the first settlement of Santo Domingo, as well as the educational, racial, and economic conditions and development of the district, have been substantially the same as in the northern dioceses of Haiti. (See Cap Haïtien.) M.
M. Chatté.