Ecclesiastical province

In the Catholic Church, a province consists of a metropolitan archdiocese and one or more suffragan dioceses headed by diocesan bishops. The archbishop of the metropolitan see is the metropolitan of the province. The delimitation of church provinces in the Latin Church is reserved to the Holy See.

There are exceptions to the rules.

• A few dioceses are not part of any province. Their bishops are exempt from the authority of a metropolitan archbishop, instead reporting directly to the pope. For example, the bishop of the Diocese of Oslo in Norway.
• A few archdioceses do not belong to provinces and contain no suffragan dioceses. For example, the Archdiocese of Strasbourg in France is not part of a province and has no diocesan bishops reporting to its archbishop.
• Not all archdioceses are metropolitan sees. Some archdioceses are exempt, such as the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem; its leader reports directly to the pope. Other non-metropolitan archdioceses, in contrast, are not exempt. Their archbishops report directly to metropolitan archbishops.

The authority of a Latin Church metropolitan over the other sees within his province is now very limited. During a vacancy in a suffragan diocese, the metropolitan names a temporary diocesan administrator if the College of Consultors of the diocese fails to elect one within the prescribed period.[4] A metropolitan generally presides at the installation and consecration of a new bishop in the province. The tribunal of the metropolitan see generally serves as the first court of appeal regarding canonical matters of provincial diocesan tribunals. The metropolitan's insignia is the pallium. The article in the Catholic Encyclopedia of 1911 on metropolitan shows that the metropolitan then had scarcely any more power than now.[5]

In the Eastern Catholic Churches, the patriarchal or major archiepiscopal Churches may also be divided into ecclesial provinces, each headed by a metropolitan. The Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has several, two of them in the United States and Canada. Some other Eastern Catholic Churches of a lower category and generally less populous, are known as metropolitanates. They are headed by a single metropolitan, the hierarch of a fixed episcopal see,[6][7] As head of an autonomous Church, his name is mentioned in the liturgy of that Church immediately after that of the Pope and, in suffragan eparchies, ahead of that of the local hierarch.[8]

The borders of provinces have often been inspired, or even determined, by historical or present political borders; the same is often true of diocesan borders within a province. The following are some examples:

• In France, where the boundaries partly reflected later Roman provinces, most were rearranged in 2002 to fit new administrative regions.
• A comparable process to that of France occurred earlier in Spain.
• In southern Germany, the diocesan boundaries follow the political boundaries that existed between 1815 and 1945.
• In Ireland, the four ecclesiastical provinces fixed by the Synod of Kells in 1152 reflected the contemporary boundaries of the secular provinces, but the ecclesiastical provinces and dioceses do not coincide with the present civil province and county borders. Since the Partition of Ireland in 1920–1922 six dioceses in the province of Armagh straddle the international border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom.
• In Scotland, the dioceses, and subsequently the two provinces, follow both civil and geographical boundaries such as rivers.
• In geographically large nations with a sizeable Catholic population, such as the United States, ecclesiastical provinces typically follow state lines, with less populous states being grouped into provinces. In the United States, there are five exceptions:
  • California has two metropolitan archdioceses and provinces: Los Angeles and San Francisco.
  • Texas has two metropolitan archdioceses and provinces: Galveston-Houston and San Antonio.
  • Maryland is unusual in that fourteen of its 23 counties belong to dioceses whose see cities are outside Maryland: (1) the nine counties of Maryland's Eastern Shore (Delmarva Peninsula) are part of the Diocese of Wilmington, Delaware, and (2) the five counties adjacent to the District of Columbia and in southern Maryland are part of the Archdiocese of Washington, which is a different province. Only the remaining nine counties and the City of Baltimore are part of the Archdiocese of Baltimore.
  • Fishers Island, a part of Suffolk County, New York, and north of Long Island, is part of the Diocese of Norwich, Connecticut, which is in a different province.
  • Those parts of Idaho and Montana that are within Yellowstone National Park are part of the Diocese of Cheyenne, Wyoming, which is in a different province.

In addition, the Diocese of Gallup (New Mexico) contains two Arizona counties—Apache County and Navajo County—and part of a third county, i.e., those parts of the Navajo and Hopi reservations that are in Coconino County (Arizona). New Mexico and Arizona, however, together form one province.

• Many countries contain more than one province, except those with a small population or few Catholics.
• In at least one case, a province contains dioceses that are in more than one nation, e.g., the Province of Samoa-Apia, of which the metropolitan see (the Archdiocese of Samoa-Apia) is in the Independent State of Samoa, and its only suffragan see (the Diocese of Samoa-Pago Pago) is in American Samoa (an unincorporated territory of the United States). Even individual dioceses, let alone ecclesiastical provinces, can comprise more than one state: examples are San Marino-Montefeltro (San Marino and part of Italy), Urgell (Andorra and part of Spain), and the Diocese of Rome itself (Vatican City and part of Italy).

Historical development of ecclesiastical provinces in the Eastern Orthodox Church was influenced by strong tendencies of internal administrative centralization. Since the First Ecumenical Council (325), the Archbishop of Alexandria was given supreme jurisdiction over all provinces of Egypt. Similar authority was also granted to Archbishop of Antioch regarding jurisdiction over provinces of Orient. Since the Fourth Ecumenical Council (451), Patriarch of Constantinople was given the right to consecrate metropolitan bishops in all regions that were placed under his supreme jurisdiction.[9] In time, previous administrative autonomy of original ecclesiastical provinces was gradually and systematically reduced in favor of patriarchal centralization. Ancient practice of annual councils of provincial bishops, headed by their local metropolitans, was also abandoned in favor of centralized councils, headed by patriarchs and attended by metropolitan bishops.

The creation of new autonomous and autocephalous jurisdictions was also marked by tendencies of internal centralization. The newly created Archbishopric of Ohrid (1018) was structured as a single ecclesiastical province, headed by an archbishop who had jurisdiction over all of his suffragan bishops. In 1219, autocephalous Serbian Orthodox Church was also organized as one ecclesiastical province, headed by archbishop with direct jurisdiction over all Serbian bishops.[10] By the end of Middle Ages, each autocephalous and autonomous church in Eastern Orthodoxy was functioning as a single, internally integrated ecclesiastical province, headed by local patriarch or archbishop.

Only in modern times, some Eastern Orthodox Churches have revived the ancient practice by creating internal ecclesiastical provinces on the middle (regional) level of church administration. In the Romanian Orthodox Church there are six regional metropolitanates, headed by local metropolitans who preside over regional synods of local bishops, and have special duties and privileges. For example, the Metropolitan of Oltenia has regional jurisdiction over four local dioceses. On the other hand, a majority of Eastern Orthodox Churches remain and function as highly centralized church bodies, each of them functioning as a single ecclesiastical province.[11]

Member churches of the Anglican Communion are often referred to as provinces. Some provinces are coterminous with the boundaries of political states, some include multiple nations while others include only parts of a nation. Some, such as the Church of the Province of West Africa, have the word "province" in their names. These member churches are known as "provinces of the Anglican Communion", and are headed by a primate, who is usually also styled archbishop, but may have an alternative title such as primus (for example, the Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church), presiding bishop, or moderator.

The word is also used to refer to a grouping of dioceses within a member church, commonly known as a metropolitical province, metropolitan province, or internal province. The Church of England is divided into two such provinces: Canterbury and York. The Anglican Church of Australia has five provinces: New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria and Western Australia, and an extraprovincial diocese of Tasmania. The Anglican Church of Canada has four: British Columbia and Yukon, Canada, Ontario, and Rupert's Land. The Church of Ireland has two: Armagh and Dublin. The Episcopal Church in the United States of America (ECUSA) numbers, rather than names, its nine provinces. In all cases apart from ECUSA each metropolitan or internal province is headed by a metropolitan bishop with the title archbishop.

The Evangelical State Church in Prussia, formed in 1821 (renamed: Evangelical State Church in Prussia's older Provinces in 1875, Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union in 1922), had ecclesiastical provinces (Kirchenprovinzen) as administrative subsections mostly following the boundaries of those political Provinces of Prussia which formed part of the state before 1866, with some border changes after 1920 following WWI territorial cessions.