Roman Catholic Diocese of Raphoe
diocese of the Catholic Church in Ireland
The Diocese of Raphoe ( rə-FOH; Latin: Dioecesis Rapotensis; Irish: Deoise Ráth Bhoth) is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Catholic Church in County Donegal in Ulster, Ireland. It is one of eight suffragan dioceses in the inter-Irish primatial ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Armagh.
On 9 June 2017, Alan McGuckian was appointed Bishop of Raphoe and was ordained to the episcopate on 5 August 2017. On 13 November 2025 he was succeeded by Niall Coll.
History
Established circa 700 as Abbacy nullius of Raphoe / Rapoten(sis) (Latin)
Promoted in 1111 as Diocese of Raphoe / Rapoten(sis) (Latin).
Statistics and geographic remit
The bishopric covers most of County Donegal apart from the Inishowen peninsula in the north of the county and Bundoran in the South. The largest towns are Ballyshannon, Donegal, Letterkenny and Stranorlar. As per 2014 it pastorally served 82,600 Catholics (91.1% of 90,700 total) on 4,030 km2 (1555 sq. mi.) in 33 parishes with 85 priests (83 diocesan, 2 religious), 48 lay religious (4 brothers, 44 sisters) and 5 seminarians.
The bishop's residence – Ard Adomnán – is in the town of Letterkenny.
“Roman Catholic Diocese of Raphoe” enters the record as diocese of the Catholic Church in Ireland. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Roman, Catholic and Diocese can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Roman Catholic Diocese of Raphoe” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Roman, Catholic and Diocese provides the most credible route into that argument.
Place names and jurisdictional language are key evidence: both can reveal earlier catalogue descriptions and overlooked record series. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q874882. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2017, 2025, 1111 and 2014.
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Three-step research path
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This entry incorporates text from “Roman Catholic Diocese of Raphoe” 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.