Venezuela, Catholic Church Records, 1577-2022

What is in This Collection?

This collection of church records covers the years 1577 to 1995 and includes parishes in several dioceses and archdioceses of Venezuela. This collection of baptisms, marriages, and burials were created, registered, and kept in separate registers by the priest in authority of the parish jurisdiction. Regularly two registers were created, the original was kept at the parish archive and a duplicate copy was sent to the diocesan archive for preservation.

The entries were normally created in chronological order. Some confirmations may be found within the baptisms book. The earlier parish records were all handwritten in narrative form, and later records were handwritten in formatted entries.

The parish registers may be the only records available for genealogical research before civil registration was implemented in 1873. Most of the parish records in this collection were acquired from the diocesan archives. Other archdiocesan registers have been published separately from this collection. As of 23 January 2018, this collection included records from the following states in Venezuela:

Reading These Records

These records are written in Spanish. For help reading them see:

• Spanish Genealogical Word List
• BYU Spanish Script Tutorial

FamilySearch Learning Center videos

• Reading Spanish Handwriting

If you speak Spanish, the following free online lesson may be helpful to learn how to use the information in these records:

• Registros Civiles y Parroquiales – Spanish

Additional records and/or images may be added to this collection in the future.

Computer Aided Indexing (CAI)

Some or all of the indexed records for this collection were created using Computer Aided Indexing (CAI) from records digitized by FamilySearch or its partners. For more information on CAI see FamilySearch Computer Aided Indexing.

To Browse This Collection

You can browse through images in this collection using the waypoints on the Collection Browse Page for Venezuela, Catholic Church Records, 1577-1995.

What Can These Records Tell Me?

The following information may be found in these records:

Baptismal and Confirmation Name Age Gender Birth date and place Date and place of baptism Date and place of confirmation Names of parents Names of godparents Names of witnesses

Marriage Name of groom Name of bride Age of groom Age of bride Date and place of marriage Birthplaces of groom and bride Names of groom’s parents Names of bride’s parents Who performed the marriages Names of witnesses

Death Deceased’s name Gender Age Date and place of death Marital status/name of spouse Birthplace Names of parents

Collection Content

Sample Images

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  1934 Baptism Records

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  1940 Confirmation Records

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  1936 Marriage Records

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  1934 Death Records