Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2023 January 3

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January 3

Number of Roman Catholic titular sees

Considering that there are currently more than 3000 ecclesiastical jurisdictions in the Roman Catholic curch, and assuming that on average every jurisdiction has – let's say – two auxiliary bishops with a titular see for each, this would mean that there must be over 6000 titular sees, if every auxiliary has his own titular see. However, for instance, this source states there existed only "more than 1,500 such sees" in 2000. So how does it actually work in reality? Hildeoc (talk) 01:26, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

• I think two auxiliary bishops with titular sees per diocese is an overestimate. Looking at GCatholic.org, there are 195 jurisdictions in the U.S. And searching for "titular" here, there are 133 titular bishops. (This is just based on searching the page for the word "titular".) Canada has 74 jurisdictions but only 18 titular bishops. Elsewhere on GCatholic.org, I see that the Philippines has 86 jurisdictions and 21 titular bishops; India has 175 jurisdictions and 32 titular bishops; and Italy has 228 jurisdictions and 115 titular bishops. Meanwhile, China has 144 jurisdictions and zero titular bishops. So if there is any country with as many titular bishops as ecclesiastical jurisdictions, much less twice as many, I haven't found it yet. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 06:14, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

@Hildeoc: I don't know how you come to "two auxiliary bishops per juristdiction in average". In Catholic Austria, only the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Vienna has two active auxiliary bishops - the rest of the country has two more in total.

@Both: Wouldn't diocese here be the cleaner category instead of juristdiction? --KnightMove (talk) 07:10, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Okay, I see my estimate was actually wrong. Hildeoc (talk) 16:11, 3 January 2023 (UTC)

Looking at the list of Catholic bishops in Poland, I see there are 45 diocesan bishops and more that 50 active auxiliary ones (with titular sees) plus 18 auxiliary bishops emiriti who retain their titular sees. I don't think the original estimate was that far off, for some countries at least. — Kpalion^(talk) 09:39, 10 January 2023 (UTC)