Roman Catholic Diocese of Montalto
former Latin Catholic diocese in Italy
The Diocese of Montalto (Latin: Dioecesis Montis Alti) was a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Catholic Church located in the town of Montalto delle Marche in the Province of Ascoli Piceno in the Italian region of Marche. The diocese was erected in 1586 by Pope Sixtus V (Felice Peretti di Montalto), a native of the town. The diocese was suppressed in 1986, and its territory was assigned to a new entity, called the Diocese of San Benedetto del Tronto–Ripatransone–Montalto.
Ecclesiastical history
On 24 November 1586, the Diocese of Montalto was established from territory split from the Diocese of Fermo.
In a papal bull of 18 December 1924, Pope Pius XI united the Diocese of Ripatransone with the diocese of Montalto ad personam episcopi. He appointed Luigi Ferri as Bishop of Ripatransone with Montalto, and ordered a change in the title of the bishop to Episcopus Montis alti et Ripanus. In 1980, the diocese of Montalto had a population of only 31,500 persons.
Restructuring
The Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), in order to ensure that all Catholics received proper spiritual attention, decreed the reorganization of the diocesan structure of Italy and the consolidation of small and struggling dioceses. It also recommended the abolition of anomalous units such as exempt territorial prelatures. These considerations applied to Montalto and to Ripatransone as the population migrated in the post-war period to jobs on the coast at San Benedetto.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Roman Catholic Diocese of Montalto” is former Latin Catholic diocese in Italy. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Roman, Catholic and Diocese, not as a finished interpretation.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q27780042. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1586, 1986, 1924 and 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “Roman Catholic Diocese of Montalto” 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.