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 reorganization following upon the Concordat of 1860 between Pope Pius IX and the Republic of Haiti; but the Faith was planted in this part of Santo Domingo towards the end of the fifteenth century, and despite the many political and social vissitudes of the island has never been quite extinguished there. The jurisdiction of the Bishop of Cayes (Monseigneur Jean-Marie-Alexandre Morice, elected March 4, 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 southwestern 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 Diocese of Cap Haitien.)
M. CHATTE