Apostolic vicariate
Catholic missionary jurisdiction of the Catholic Church
An apostolic vicariate is a territorial jurisdiction of the Catholic Church under a titular bishop centered in missionary regions and countries where dioceses or parishes have not yet been established. The status of apostolic vicariate is often a promotion for a former apostolic prefecture, while either may have started out as a mission sui iuris. It is essentially provisional, though it may last for a century or more. The hope is that the region will generate sufficient numbers of Catholics for the Church to create a diocese one day.
It is exempt under canon law, directly subject to the missionary Dicastery for Evangelization of the Vatican in Rome. Like the stage of apostolic prefecture which often precedes it, the vicariate is not part of an ecclesiastical province. It is intended to mature in developing Catholic members until it can be promoted to a (usually suffragan) diocese.
The Eastern Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church counterpart is an (apostolic, patriarchal, or archiepiscopal) exarchate.
Institution
An apostolic vicariate is led by a vicar apostolic, who is usually a titular bishop. While such a territory can be classed as a particular church, according to canon 371.1 of the Latin Code of Canon Law, a vicar apostolic's jurisdiction is an exercise of the jurisdiction of the pope—the territory comes directly under the pope as "universal bishop", and the pope exercises this authority through a "vicar".
“Apostolic vicariate” enters the record as catholic missionary jurisdiction of the Catholic Church. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Apostolic, vicariate and Catholic can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q620225. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Apostolic vicariate” 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.