The Rovigo of the Bishops

The Diocese of Adria-Rovigo has two cathedrals and an unusual story: a bishop who, for a millennium, was Bishop ‘of Adria’ while living somewhere else. It is a story of short distances and very long spans of time. To understand it, you have to start in Adria, the ancient port that gave its name to the Adriatic.

Roots in Adria

That is where the diocese was born. Tradition traces its Christian roots to St Apollinaris. The first documented bishop is called Gallonisto: in 649 he attended the Roman synod of Pope Martin I. For more than eleven centuries the diocese remained a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Ravenna, that is, under its metropolitan authority.

The bishop who chose Rovigo

The key moment for Rovigo came in the 10th century. According to the diocesan archive, Bishop Paolo, with the permission of Pope John X, moved his residence from Adria to Rovigo, ‘a healthier and safer city’.

So began a double identity that would last for centuries. The official seat and the Curia, the diocese’s administrative headquarters, stayed in Adria. The bishops, however, lived in Rovigo. That is why the Duomo of Santo Stefano was given a chapter of canons. Even in the 19th and 20th centuries the diocese would still have two bishop’s palaces, one in each city.

In 1484, with the Peace of Bagnolo, the territory passed to the Venetian Republic (the Serenissima). The relationship with Venice would not always be easy: in 1639 Venice went so far as to seize the assets of the Mensa vescovile, the endowment that supported the bishop.

After Trent, a seminary

In July 1563 the Council of Trent decreed that every diocese should have a seminary to train its priests. The Bishop of Adria, Giulio Canani, had taken part in the council. On his return he called the synods of 1564, 1566 and 1567, and a long debate began: should the seminary be in Adria or in Rovigo?

The answer came in 1592. Bishop Lorenzo Laureti chose Rovigo and bought a modest house near the Duomo. Two centuries later the seminary found a new home in the former friary of the Augustinian Hermits of Sant’Agostino, on Via Sichirollo, rebuilt between 1779 and 1794.

The Curia’s long journey

In 1818 Pius VII’s bull ‘De Salute’ detached the diocese from Ravenna and assigned it to the Patriarchate of Venice, of which it is still a suffragan.

The step that closed the circle came in 1909. Bishop Boggiani moved the Curia to Rovigo, where the bishops already lived permanently. Part of the chapter archive moved with the Curia. After a thousand years, the offices finally caught up with their bishop. In 1941 the city would also gain a new bishop’s palace.

On 30 September 1986 the diocese took its present name of Adria-Rovigo. It was the recognition of a fact centuries old. The cathedral remains that of Santi Pietro e Paolo in Adria, while Santo Stefano in Rovigo became a co-cathedral, in 1986 or 1987 according to the sources. The patron saint of the diocese is San Bellino.

The diocese today

Today the diocese has 109 parishes across 1,193 square kilometres. Since 2015 its bishop has been Mgr Pierantonio Pavanello. The Curia is based at Via Sichirollo 18, in Rovigo, on the same street as the former 18th-century Seminary.

In the footsteps of the bishops

This story is not locked away in the archives. You can read it as you walk through the centre. Start at the Duomo of Santo Stefano, the canons’ church, with its façade never finished. Continue along Via Sichirollo, between the Curia and the former Seminary born of the Council of Trent. Then come the Rotonda, whose first stone was laid in the presence of Bishop Laureti, and the Church of San Domenico, reopened for worship by Bishop Molin after the fall of Napoleon. At San Bartolomeo, in the wooden choir, the coats of arms of the bishops from 1318 to the present day wait to be read one by one.

Each stop is a chapter in the Rovigo of the bishops. All you have to do is set off.