The Archdiocese (from the Greek. Αρχή "chief, senior" and Greek. Απαρχία , also the archdiocese , archdiocese ) is a church territorial-administrative unit, a diocese that has a higher status than the bishopric.
Roman Catholic
An archdiocese, or archdiocese ( lat. Archidioecesis ), can belong to one of three types:
- The archdiocese, which is part of the metropolis , or church province .
- Historical, now titular , archdiocese.
- Residential archdiocese, not belonging to any metropolis, but subordinated directly to the Apostolic See . Such archdioceses were created, as a rule, as the basis of future metropolises (Galician archdiocese in 1367 , Mogilev in 1783 , Warsaw in 1818, and others.)
In Orthodox Churches
In the Orthodox churches of the Greek tradition (with the exception of Jerusalem), the archdiocese has a higher status than the metropolitan, therefore the status of the archdiocese is assigned to the diocese, directly subordinate to the superior bishop of the local church. For example, the Patriarch of Constantinople governs the Archdiocese of Constantinople, and the Patriarch of Alexandria controls the Archdiocese of Alexandria. In the Constantinople Orthodox Church, the status of archdiocese is given to the Thyatira archdiocese and the Australian archdiocese .
In the Slavic Orthodox Churches, the dignity of the archbishop is lower than that of the metropolitan, and is given for personal merit and is not related to the rank of the occupied department. Often, the Archbishop had a Vicar Bishop under his command. Almost always, such a diocese is headed by an archbishop or a metropolitan.