Diocese of Ajaccio

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The Catholic diocese of Ajaccio (Adjax or Ajax in Latin) comprises the whole island of Corsica. It was formerly a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Pisa, but since the French Concordat of 1801, has been a suffragan of Aix.

Its first bishop known to history was Evander, who assisted at the Council of Rome in 313.

Before the French Revolution, Corsica contained five other dioceses:

  • diocese of Accia (vacant since 1563);
  • diocese of Aléria, an ancient city of the Phocians, whose bishop resided at Corte;
  • diocese of Sagone, a vanished city whose bishop resided at Calvi, while the Chapter was at Vico;
  • diocese of Mariana, also a vanished city, whose bishop resided at Bastia;
  • and diocese of Nebbio.

Pius X, when appointing Mgr. Desanti Bishop of Ajaccio (in the summer of 1906), reserved the right of regulating anew the diocesan limits, in virtue of which the diocese of Bastia may be restored.

The Byzantine ruins at Mariana perpetuate the memory of the church built by the Pisans in the 12th century.

There is a legend that the bishops banished from Africa to Corsica in 484 by Hunneric, Arian King of the Vandals, built with their own hands the primitive cathedral of Ajaccio. The present cathedral, dating from the end of the 16th century, owes its construction to the initiative of Gregory XIII, who while still Ugo Buoncompagni, spent some time at Ajaccio as papal legate. The see was left vacant for five years, during which time the diocesan revenues were applied to the building of the cathedral. It was finished by Bishop Giustiniani after his nomination.

Services are held according to the Greek rite in the village of Cargèse, founded in 1676 by the descendants of the Byzantine Stephen Comnenus, whom the Ottoman Turks had expelled from the Peloponnesus.

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