Archdiocese of Milan
Catholic archdiocese in Italy
The Archdiocese of Milan (Italian: Arcidiocesi di Milano; Latin: Archidioecesis Mediolanensis) is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or archdiocese of the Catholic Church in Italy which covers the areas of Milan, Monza, Lecco and Varese.
The Archdiocese of Milan is the metropolitan see of the ecclesiastical province of Milan, which includes the suffragan dioceses of Bergamo, Brescia, Como, Crema, Cremona, Lodi, Mantova, Pavia, and Vigevano. It has long maintained its own Latin liturgical rite usage, the Ambrosian rite, which is still used in the greater part of the diocesan territory.
Among its past archbishops, the better known are: Ambrose; Saint Carlo Cardinal Borromeo; Pope Pius XI; and Pope Paul VI.
Milan's archdiocese is the largest in Europe, and the one having the most priests in the world, with, as of 2021, 2,450 priests living in the diocese, among whom 1,712 are secular priests.
History
According to the legend, the Gospel was brought to Milan by the apostle Barnabas, and the first Bishop of Milan, Anathalon, was a disciple of that apostle. But a diocese cannot have been established there, as such, before 200, as the dioceses of the church evolved from the civil (Roman) dioceses following the reforms of Emperor Diocletian, for the list of the bishops of Milan names only five predecessors of Mirocles, who participated at the Lateran council held in 313 in Rome. During the persecutions of the third and early fourth century, several Christians suffered martyrdom and were venerated at Milan: among them Gervasius and Protasius (first persecution of Diocletian), Victor, Nabor and Felix, and Nazarius and Celsus. The persecutions ended in 313 when the Emperors Constantine I and Licinius issued the Edict of Milan which proclaimed the religious toleration in the Roman Empire.
Among its bishops should be named Eustorgius I and Dionysius, who firmly opposed apostasy imposed by the Roman Emperor Constantius II; Dionysus was exiled to Cappadocia (355). The Arian Emperor Constans, employing violence, then imposed Auxentius on the diocese of Milan.
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This entry incorporates text from “Archdiocese of Milan” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.