The Diocese of Plymouth is a Latin Church diocese of the Catholic Church in England. The episcopal see is in the city of Plymouth, Devon, where the bishop's seat (cathedra) is located at the Cathedral Church of St Mary and St Boniface.

History

Erected as the Diocese of Plymouth in 1850 by Pope Pius IX, from the Apostolic Vicariate of the Western District, the diocese has remained jurisdictionally constant since. Since 1965, the diocese has been a suffragan see of the Ecclesiastical Province of Southwark; before then, from 1850 to 1911 it was in the Province of Westminster, then from 1911 to 1965 in the Province of Birmingham. In December 2023, Christopher Whitehead from the Diocese of Clifton was appointed bishop-elect of the diocese, replacing Bishop Mark O’Toole, who had been appointed as Archbishop of Cardiff a year prior. His episcopal ordination was due to take place on the 22nd February. On 1st February, the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales released a statement that Whitehead was under canonical investigation, and that the ordination would not take place, no reason was given. The diocese remains under a diocesan administrator.

Details

The diocese covers the counties of Cornwall, Devon and Dorset, stretching from Penzance and the Isles of Scilly in the west, to parts of Bournemouth in the east. It is divided into five deaneries: Cornwall, Dorset, Exeter, Plymouth, and Torbay. There are chaplaincies at the universities of Bournemouth, Exeter and Plymouth. The diocese includes the Grail Centre in Pinner in the London Borough of Harrow (which is physically in the Diocese of Westminster), a lay community of single Roman Catholic women. The Centre promotes a wider "Grail community" to include non-resident women and families, and also publishes a translation of the Psalms.

Bishops

Ordinaries

Coadjutor Bishops

Other priests of this diocese who became bishops

Churches

Cornwall: Bodmin (SS Mary & St Petroc), Tintagel (St Paul the Apostle), Falmouth (St Mary's) Devon: Exeter Sacred Heart, Plymouth Cathedral of St Mary and St Boniface, Torquay (Assumption of Our Lady) and Torquay (Our Lady Help of Christians and St Denis) Dorset: Dorchester (Holy Trinity), Weymouth (St Joseph) Monasteries, abbeys and priories: Buckfast Abbey, Ivybridge St Austin's Priory, Lanherne Carmelite Community, Sclerder Abbey