Country France Area 6,158 km (2,378 sq mi) Sui iuris church Latin Church | Ecclesiastical province Tours Denomination Roman Catholic | |
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Population
- Total
- Catholics (as of 2014)
607,000
501,600 (82.6%) | ||
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Tours (Latin: Archidioecesis Turonensis) is an Archdiocese of the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic church in France. The archdiocese encompasses the historical Gallo-Roman province of Civitas Turonum and the French province of Touraine. Since 1790 it has corresponded with the département of Indre et Loire. Erected in the 3rd century, the diocese was elevated in the 5th century.
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The ecclesiastical province of Tours corresponded with the late Roman province of Tertia Lugdunensis. During Breton independence the see of Dol briefly exercised metropolitical functions (mainly tenth century). In 1859 the Breton dioceses except that of Nantes were constituted into a province of Rennes. Tours kept its historic suffragans of Le Mans, Angers (a hostile bishop of Angers appears to have been present at the episcopal consecration of St. Martin) together with Nantes and a newly constituted diocese of Laval. In 2002 Tours lost all connection with its historic province, all its previous suffragans depending henceforth on an expanded province of Rennes (corresponding to the Brittany and Pays de la Loire administrative regions). Tours since 2002 has become the ecclesiastical metropolis of the Centre administrative region, i.e. including the dioceses of Bourges, which has lost its metropolitical function to Clermont Ferrand, Orleans, Chartres and Blois, which depended historically on Sens (Lugdunensis Quarta) and more recently on Paris (and briefly Bourges).
The current bishop is Bernard-Nicolas Jean-Marie Aubertin, who was appointed in 2005.
Pilgrimages
The main pilgrimage sites in the diocese besides the grottos of Marmoutier, are: Notre-Dame-la-Riche, a sanctuary erected on the site of a church dating from the third century, and where the founder St. Gatianus is venerated; Notre-Dame-de-Loches; St. Christopher and St. Giles at St-Christophe, a pilgrimage dating from the ninth century; the pilgrimage to the Oratory of the Holy Face in Tours, managed by Priests of the Holy Face canonically erected on 8 December 1876.