Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Kinshasa
On 3 April 1919, it was renamed the Apostolic Vicariate of Léopoldville. It lost territory several times more: to establish the "Mission sui juris" of Bikoro on 3 January 1931, the Apostolic Vicariate of Boma on 26 February 1934, the Apostolic Prefecture of Kole on 14 June 1951, and the Apostolic Vicariate of Inongo on 29 June 1953. It was elevated on 10 November 1959 as the Archdiocese of Léopoldville, when the city was soon to become the national capital of the newly-independent Republic of the Congo. It was renamed the Archdiocese of Kinshasa on 30 May 1966, when the city's name was changed from Léopoldville to Kinshasa. The archdiocese was visited by Pope John Paul II in May 1980 and again in August 1985.
The Archdiocese of Kinshasa is the metropolitan archdiocese of the Ecclesiastical Province of Kinshasa, which includes the following suffragan dioceses:
History of Kinshasa
The African population was 20,000 in 1920 and 27,000 in 1924; the European population rose from 245 in 1908 to 2521 in 1914 to 2521 in 1918. 1926, the city was elevated to capital of the Belgian Congo, replacing the town of Boma in the Congo estuary. By 1929 the city population was 48,088 including 2,766 Europeans and after a decline at the beginning of the 1930s began to rise again at the same rate. On the eve of independence in 1959 the city population was 300,000 including 25,000 Europeans.
The original layout of the city was segregated between African and European, with a “no man’s land” in between. As the city grew this in-between area became the commercial district. The city was formally redesigned in the 1930s with stricter rules for segregation and a bigger central area. A new central market for both races, as well as a golf club, a park, and a botanical garden for whites, were developed as part of the new "cordon sanitaire" dividing (not altogether effectively) the neighborhoods by race. Additional segregated master plans, proposed in Brussels and locally in the 1950s, were never implemented.