Costa Rica, Catholic Church Records - FamilySearch Historical Records

Costa Rica

What is in the Collection?
This collection includes records from 1595 to 1992.

Parish priests performed the baptisms, confirmations, marriages, deaths, burials, and other holy sacraments in their assigned parish or parishes. For a complete list of all the parishes included in this collection, see the Parishes of Costa Rica coverage table.

All the original parish records were kept in the parish archive; however, the older records were centralized in the archdiocesan archive, as it is done currently. Parish records cover 95 to 100% of a city’s population. This collection only includes the parish records that were centralized at the archdiocesan archive at the time of filming.

These parish records have been preserved relatively well. Some of the older registers may appear to have some physical damage; therefore some data may have been lost or may be very difficult to read, however, in general they are in good condition to extract genealogical information.

The Catholic Church parish records are an excellent source for genealogical research in Costa Rica. These may also be the only records available before the implementation of the civil registration in 1887.

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