The Archdiocese of Agrigento is a Latin Church ecclesiastical jurisdiction or archdiocese of the Catholic Church in Sicily, Italy. The historic diocese of Agrigento was also known as the Diocese of Girgenti, and Diocese of Agrigentum. It used to be a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Monreale. A metropolitan see, the Archdiocese of Agrigento has two suffragan dioceses in its ecclesiastical province.

History

Girgenti (the Greek Acragas, Roman Agrigentum) considers Saint Libertinus as its earliest proselytizer; he is said to have been sent by Saint Peter. Local enthusiasm for an Apostolic connection even led someone to forge a bull of investiture, an instrument which was not created for centuries. Gregory of Agrigento, said to have been martyred in 262, never existed. His name occurs in the hagiographical work, "The Life of St. Agrippina", but the author of that work, a person of the eighth or ninth century, placed the sixth century Bishop Gregory of Agrigento in the wrong context. The earliest bishop of certain date is Potamius, who was believed to be a contemporary of Pope Agapetus I (535–36). Other scholars place him in the seventh century, in which case he would not be the earliest Bishop of Agrigento. The succession of bishops, interrupted by the Saracen invasion (879–1038), began again in 1093 with Gerland of Agrigento.

Bishops

to 1300

1300 to 1500

1500 to 1818

since 1818

Suffragan sees

Additional sources

Reference Works

Studies