List of defunct Catholic religious institutes
Wikimedia list article
This is a list of religious institutes of the Catholic Church that are now defunct.
This page lists religious institutes of the Catholic Church that are now defunct. This includes institutes that have merged, been suppressed, disbanded or died out:
Merged refers to institutes who have either formed a new institute with another group, or joined another institute altogether.
Suppressed refers to institutes who have been forcibly disbanded by an ecclesiastical or secular authority, usually for political or religious reasons.
Disbanded refers to institutes who have decided to break up by the institute's own choice or authority, usually due to lack of numbers or a drastic change in circumstances or resources.
Died out refers to institutes which ceased to exist upon the death of their last living member.
The list includes not only pontifical right but also diocesan right institutes (institutes established within a diocese, under the authority of a bishop). It also includes associations formed with a view to becoming religious institutes but were never canonically erected even on the diocesan level. The list does not distinguish between institutes that would have historically been classified as religious orders, whose members make solemn vows, and religious congregations, whose members make simple vows. Since the 1983 Code of Canon Law, only the term religious institute is used, while the distinction between solemn and simple vows is still maintained.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q21068745. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1983.
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