Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 3.djvu/57

 BUENOS AIRES

35

BUENOS AIRES

2302 members of the Helvetic Evangelical Church; 12,117 Jews; and 46 of no religious persuasion. The population of 282 of the ecclesiastical divisions (68.9 per cent), 761,568 is almost entirely Czech; that of 110 (15.34 per cent), 181,790, purely Ger- man; that of 25 (10.66 per cent), 119,830, predomi- nantly Czech; and of 15 (5.1 per cent), 59,925, pre- vailingly German. The average population of a Carish is 2000, the population of the largest, Budweis, eing 45,528, and of file smallest, Korkushutten, 414. The clergy actively engaged in the ministry num- ber 849 secular and 136 regular priests. The latter are thus divided: 59 Cistercians from Hohenfurth, with 4 professed clerics; 18 Brothers of the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar, a congregation founded at Budweis in 18.SS. with 5 clerics, 18 lay brothers, and 11 novices; 14 Premonstratensians; 11 Knights of Malta; 3 Minorites; 4 Reformed Franciscans, with 5 lay brothers; 3 Calced anil 4 Discalccd Augus- tinians. with 1 lay brothers; 6 Redemptorists, with 4 lay brothers; (J Servitea with 4 lay brothers; 4 Capuchins, with 4 lay brothers; 3 Piarists. Twenty- nine parishes arc attended by members of religious orders; 2 are granted by free collation, i. c. bestowed by the metropolitan; and the rest are subject to pat- ronage, 88 to ecclesiastii a] patronage. The cathedral chapter ((insists of a provost, a dean, who is also the urban dean of Budweis, a cantor, and 3 capitu- lar canons to which are added 4 honorary canons; the consistory has 9 members. Young men are trained for the priesthood in the theological semi- nary at Budweis, which provides for those speak- ing the different languages found in the diocese; it has 6 professors and 103 students, 3 in the Bo- hemian College in Rome. There is also in Budweis an episcopal school lor boys (/utit s<~titiwnrr) without

attached (founded 1853). Female Religious Orders, Shrines, Chi rches,

etc. — In the diocese there are 7 orders of women, with 362 sisters, 'III novices and lay sisters, and 40 houses; 216 1'oor School Sisters of Notre Dame (since 1849); 129 Sisters of St. Charles Borromeo (1.S42); 93 Sisters of the .Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar (founded at Budweis in 1887); 2 Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul; 3 Sisters of the Holy Cross; 3 Servites; and 2 Franciscans. The great mass of the people arc engaged in agricultural pursuits and are in general religiously inclined. Popular missions (Volksmissionen) are frequent, 450 of them being held between L850 and 1897 in 228 parishes. 334 by Redemptorists and 112 by Jesuits. The chief con- fraternities arc: the Confraternity of the Rosary, in 230 parishes, with 30,000 members; the Confra- ternity for the Adoration of the Most Blessed Sacra- ment and 'he Adornment of Poor Churches, founded in 1859. in 23N parishes, which has 15,000 members and disburses yearly 5.000 kronen (SI, 000); the Confraternity of St. Michael in 265 parishes, with 5.00(1 i bo contribute annually 4.000

kronen [$800 towards Peter's-pence.

The principal places of pilgrimage are: Brtinn, founded in 1715, visited yearly by Slid processions; Rimau, built at the end of the seventeenth century, with 100 annual processions; Gojau mentioned as early as 1469; and Kfemeschnik. built in 1632. Here, as in the rest of Bohemia, ecclesiastical edifices of earlier centuries were greatly damaged during the religious wars of the fifteenth to the seventeenth cen- tury. The prevailing architectural style is baroque. Mention should be made of 'lie Romanesque church of Mulilhattscn, built between llsl and 1250, for- merly a Premonstratensian church; the Cistercian abbey-churches ,,f Goldenkron (12(13 13(10), and Hohenfurth (1269 1350), built in Gothic style; the two-naved church of St. JJgidius in Muhlhausen, originally Romanesque (in the twelfth century), in 1407 rebuilt in the Gothic style; the cathedral at

Budweis (1642-49) and the parish church at Prestitz (1748-73) are examples of the baroque style, the latter designed by Kilian Dienzenhofer. Popular Catholic associations are not at present very nu- merous. There are but two Catholic weekly papers in the diocese. It is only within recent years that any serious attempts have been made to organize the Catholics of the diocese, both on political and non-partisan lines. These efforts have so far met with scant success; in the past, therefore, the territory of the diocese has been represented in the Austrian Parliament by Liberal deputies.

Thajkr, Hittoritch-atatistisrlir B,srhrrilning dcr Duizete Budweit (Budweis, lSiiL'i; M.mu.i is, hi.ager-Trajer, Ge- srhichtr dm Bistums Buduns (iliiil., 1SS.5); Ladenbacer, Das torinle Wirkcn dcr kathol. Kircltr in Orstcrrcich; Dt.zrse Bud- ueu (Vienna. 1S99); Catalogue Cleri dime. Budricen, 1907 (Budweis, 1907).

Karl Hilgenreiner. Buenos Aires, the federal capital of the Argentine Republic, and the second city of the Latin races in the world (having a population of 1,100,000), as well as the first in commercial importance among the cities of South America, is situated in latitude 34° 35' 30" S., and longitude 58° 22' 20" W., on the right bank of the

of Buenos Aires

Rfo de la Plata, at an elevation of about 65 feet. The Rio de la Plata (Plate, or Silver, River), the estu- ary of which has a maximum width of more than 108 miles, is about 43 miles wide at Buenos Aires.

With a mean annual death-rate of 14 per thousand, the city takes rank in respect of sanitation with the most advanced cities of the world. The mean tem- perature is 62° 6' F.,snow never falls, and hail only rarely, and the thermometer ranges from 59 F. to 82° 4' 1'., at times, however, reaching 95°. The north wind, humid and warm, and in summer even suffoca- ting, charges tic atmosphere with electricity, causing general debility and nervous troubles; but this wind never lasts for more than three days, and generally changes to a south-east wind, bringing rain or storm. upon which there follows the cold, dry south-west wind called the Pampero, which clears the sky. The vicissitudes of weather are extremely abrupt, with changes of teniper.it ure amounting sometimes to as much as 36°, with violent winds. The Pampero, highly charged with ozone, exercises a disinfecting influence and serves to purify the vitiated atmosphere of the thickly populated sections of the city. The healthiness of Buenos Aires (in English, literally, Good Airs) .-irises from two other most important

causes: the supply ,,f running Water and the drainage system as to both of which something will be said later on. The mean annual rainfall recorded in the five years from 1899 to 1903 was a little more than