Archdiocese of Tours Archidioecesis Turonensis Archidiocèse de Tours
Tours Cathedral
Location
Country	France
Ecclesiastical province	Tours
Statistics
Area	6,158 km2 (2,378 sq mi)
Population - Total - Catholics	(as of 2022) 608,390 (est.) 502,000 (est.) (82.5%)
Parishes	39
Information
Denomination	Catholic
Sui iuris church	Latin Church
Rite	Roman Rite
Established	3rd Century (As Diocese of Tours) 5th Century (As Archdiocese of Tours)
Cathedral	Cathedral of St. Gatianus in Tours
Patron saint	St. Gatianus of Tours St. Martin of Tours
Secular priests	72 (Diocesan) 23 (Religious Orders) 30 Permanent Deacons
Current leadership
Pope	Francis
Archbishop	Vincent Jordy
Suffragans	Archdiocese of Bourges Diocese of Blois Diocese of Chartres Diocese of Orléans
Bishops emeritus	Bernard-Nicolas Aubertin
Map
Website
diocesedetours.catholique.fr

The Archdiocese of Tours (Latin: Archidioecesis Turonensis; French: Archidiocèse de Tours) is a Latin Church archdiocese of the Catholic Church in France. The archdiocese has roots that go back to the 3rd century, while the formal erection of the diocese dates from the 5th century.

The ecclesiastical province of Tours corresponds with the late Roman province of Tertia Lugdunensis. During Breton independence the see of Dol briefly exercised metropolitical functions (mainly tenth century). In 1859 the Breton dioceses except that of Nantes were constituted into a province of Rennes. Tours kept its historic suffragans of Le Mans, Angers together with Nantes and a newly constituted Diocese of Laval. In 2002 Tours lost all connection with its historic province, all its previous suffragans depending henceforth on an expanded province of Rennes (corresponding to the Brittany and Pays de la Loire administrative regions). Tours since 2002 has become the ecclesiastical metropolis of the Centre administrative region.

In 2022, in the Archdiocese of Tours there was one priest for every 5,284 Catholics.

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (May 2017)

According to Louis Duchesne, the See of Tours was probably founded in the time of Constantine; Gregory of Tours says by Gatianus.^[1] As the city, (called "Caesarodunum"), was important as a crossing point of the Loire, it became a stop on the route to Santiago de Compostela. The fourth bishop was Brice of Tours. Stories about his tenure suggest tensions between the regular clergy and the secular priests in Tours at that time. Saint Perpetuus was bishop from 460 to 490. During his administration Christianity was further developed and consolidated in the province of Touraine. He was followed by Volusianus of Tours, a relative of Ruricius of Limoges. The first cathedral, dedicated to Saint Maurice, was built by Bishop Lidoire, sometime in the fourth century; it burned down in 561, but was restored by Gregory of Tours.

Bishop Chrotbert (Robert) is mentioned in the earliest grant of privileges to the Monastery of St. Martin in Tours,^[2] made by Pope Adeodatus (672–676). The document survives only in two copies which differ significantly between them;^[3] both are suspect.^[4]

In May 858, which was the third year of his pontificate, Archbishop Herardus held a diocesan synod, in which a codification was issued of the capitula ('regulations') of the diocese. The document contained 140 chapters.^[5]

On 21 January 1216, Pope Innocent III confirmed an agreement entered into between the Archbishop of Tours and the Chapter of the cathedral on the election of a Dean and Provosts.^[6]

After the death of Archbishop Jean de la Faye in April 1228, there appears to have been considerable difficulty in finding a new archbishop. Jean Maan, Dean of Mans, was brought to Tours, but he refused the see, or was unable to muster sufficient votes. Then the see was offered to Master Pierre de Collomedio of Champagne, a Canon of Thérouanne and Papal Legate, but, though the election was canonically carried out, he refused the offer.^[7]

The leaders of the French Revolution, as part of their program, planned to bring the religions in France under their control. The Roman Church was rich, and therefore powerful. The Revolution needed to redirect that power and acquire that wealth to finance their own projects. One device was to transfer old loyalties by breaking up the traditional units of political, social and religious organization. The property of the religious organizations was to be confiscated for the benefit of the people of France, and all clergy would become state employees, with their salaries fixed and paid by the government. The new political unit was to be the "département", of which eighty-four were planned.^[8] It was determined by the Constituent Assembly that the Church was overloaded with bishops; therefore the number of dioceses needed to be reduced, from the 135 of the Ancien Régime, to 82 or 83, and that to the extent possible they were to have the same borders as the new political departments. The Diocese of Tours was therefore abolished and subsumed into a new diocese, coterminous with the new 'Departement d'Indre-et-Loire', which was to be a suffragan of the 'Metropole du Centre' (composed of the dioceses of Allier, Cher, Creuse, Indre, Indre-et-Loire, Loire-et-Cher, Nièvre and Vienne, with its center at Bourges^[9]) in the "Constitutional Church".^[10] The clergy were required to swear and oath to the Constitution, and under the terms of the Civil Constitution of the Clergy a new bishop was to be elected by all the voters of the département, who did not even need to be Catholics.^[11] This placed them in schism with the Roman Catholic Church and the Pope. Archbishop de Conzié of Tours refused to take the oath,^[12] and his bishopric was therefore declared to be vacant.

On 13 March 1791 the electors of Indre-et-Loire met in Tours in the cathedral. They were harangued by members of the Société des Amis de la Constitution, who pressed for the election of their president, a former Oratorian by the name of Ysabeau, who, however, could not muster a majority. Instead on the next day the electors chose Pierre Suzor, the curate of Ecueillé.^[13] He proceeded to Paris, where he was consecrated a bishop on 10 April by Constitutional Bishops Massieu, Delcher, and Sibille.^[14] His consecration was valid, but uncanonical and schismatic, and brought him excommunication. As bishop, he was at first conservative and somewhat rigorous, refusing to sanction the marriage of clergy, but later he succumbed to pressure. At the end of 1793, when Religion was abolished and replaced by Reason and the churches closed, most of the 360 clergy of Indre-et-Loire abdicated or apostasized. Religion was restored in 1795, but Suzor did not regain possession of the cathedral until 13 May 1797. Suzor suffered a stroke in 1797; the bishops of the Metropolitanate were allowed to assemble at Bourges in 1800 to find him a successor. On 1 February 1801 Hyacinthe Tardiveau accepted the position, and Suzor died on 13 April 1801, having approved of his successor. Tardiveau was never bishop, since he made his acceptance conditional upon receiving the traditional bulls from the pope, which never happened. In May 1801 First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte required the resignation of all Constitutional bishops; he was in the process of completing a concordat with the Papacy, and the Constitutional Church was an obstacle.^[15]

After the Concordat went into effect, Pius VII was able to issue the appropriate bulls to restore many of the dioceses and to regulate their boundaries, most of which corresponded closely to the new 'départements'.^[16] The Diocese of Tours, which was coterminous with the Department of Indre-et-Loire, had as suffragans: Le Mans, Angers, Rennes, Nantes, Quimper, Vannes, Saint-Pol, Treguier, Saint-Brieux Saint-Mâlo and Dol.

The main pilgrimage sites in the diocese besides the grottos of Marmoutier, are: Notre-Dame-la-Riche, a sanctuary erected on the site of a church dating from the third century, and where the founder St. Gatianus is venerated; Notre-Dame-de-Loches; St. Christopher and St. Giles at St-Christophe, a pilgrimage dating from the ninth century; the pilgrimage to the Oratory of the Holy Face in Tours, managed by Priests of the Holy Face canonically erected on 8 December 1876.^[1][17]

• Albert Negre 1913–1931
• Ludovico Gaillard 1931–1956
• Louis Ferrand 1956–1980
• Jean Marcel Honoré 1981–1997;^[100] elevated to Cardinal in 2001
• Michel Moutel 1997–1998
• André Vingt-Trois 1999–2005;^[101] appointed Archbishop of Paris (Cardinal in 2007)
• Bernard-Nicolas Aubertin, O.Cist. (2005 - 26 October 2019)^[102]
• Vincent Jordy (4 November 2019^[103] – present)

• Gams, Pius Bonifatius (1873). Series episcoporum Ecclesiae catholicae: quotquot innotuerunt a beato Petro apostolo. Ratisbon: Typis et Sumptibus Georgii Josephi Manz. (Use with caution; obsolete)
• Eubel, Conradus, ed. (1913). Hierarchia catholica, Tomus 1 (second ed.). Münster: Libreria Regensbergiana. (in Latin)
• Eubel, Conradus, ed. (1914). Hierarchia catholica, Tomus 2 (second ed.). Münster: Libreria Regensbergiana. (in Latin)
• Eubel, Conradus; Gulik, Guilelmus, eds. (1923). Hierarchia catholica, Tomus 3 (second ed.). Münster: Libreria Regensbergiana.
• Gauchat, Patritius (Patrice) (1935). Hierarchia catholica IV (1592–1667). Münster: Libraria Regensbergiana. Retrieved 6 July 2016.
• Ritzler, Remigius; Sefrin, Pirminus (1952). Hierarchia catholica medii et recentis aevi V (1667–1730). Patavii: Messagero di S. Antonio. Retrieved 6 July 2016.
• Ritzler, Remigius; Sefrin, Pirminus (1958). Hierarchia catholica medii et recentis aevi. Vol. VI (1730–1799). Patavii: Messagero di S. Antonio. Retrieved 6 July 2016.
• Ritzler, Remigius; Sefrin, Pirminus (1968). Hierarchia Catholica medii et recentioris aevi (in Latin). Vol. VII (1800–1846). Monasterii: Libr. Regensburgiana.
• Remigius Ritzler; Pirminus Sefrin (1978). Hierarchia catholica Medii et recentioris aevi (in Latin). Vol. VIII (1846–1903). Il Messaggero di S. Antonio.
• Pięta, Zenon (2002). Hierarchia catholica medii et recentioris aevi (in Latin). Vol. IX (1903–1922). Padua: Messagero di San Antonio. ISBN 978-88-250-1000-8.

• V. Arnault (1893). Le clergé de Touraine pendant la Révolution française, 1789-1800 (in French). Tours: Alfred Cattier.
• Chevalier, C. (1871). Origines de l'Église de Tours in: Mémoires de la Société Archéologique de Touraine (in French). Tours: Guilland-Verger. 1871. pp. 1–634.
• Crété-Protin, Isabelle (2002). Église et vie chrétienne dans le diocèse de Troyes du IVe au IXe siècle (in French). Villeneuve-d'Ascq (Nord): Presses Univ. Septentrion. ISBN 978-2-85939-753-1.
• Duchesne, Louis (1890). Les anciens catalogues épiscopaux de la province de Tours (in French). Paris: E. Thorin.
• Duchesne, Louis (1910). Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule: II. L'Aquitaine et les Lyonaises. Paris: Fontemoing. second edition (in French)
• Hauréau, Barthélemy (1856). Gallia Christiana: In Provincias Ecclesiasticas Distributa... De provincia Turonensi (in Latin). Vol. Tomus Quartus decimus (XIV). Paris: Typographia Regia. pp. 1084–1118, Instrumenta, pp. 261–270.
• Jean, Armand (1891). Les évêques et les archevêques de France depuis 1682 jusqu'à 1801 (in French). Paris: A. Picard.
• Jehan (de Saint-Clavien), L.-F. (1871). Saint Gatien, premier évêque de Tours, in: Mémoires de la Société Archéologique de Touraine (in French). Tours: Guilland-Verger. 1871. pp. 641–756.
• Tableau des évêques constitutionnels de France, de 1791 a 1801 (in French). Paris: chez Méquignon-Havard. 1827. p. 32.
• Société bibliographique (France) (1907). L'épiscopat français depuis le Concordat jusqu'à la Séparation (1802–1905). Paris: Librairie des Saints-Pères.

• (in French) Centre national des Archives de l'Église de France, L'Épiscopat francais depuis 1919 Archived 19 September 2020 at the Wayback Machine, retrieved: 2016-12-24.

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