The basic unit of the Catholic Church is the diocese. This is the community of believers that is entrusted to the care of a bishop.

Several dioceses are then grouped together into a province. One of the dioceses in a province will be designated the archdiocese, though there is little day-to-day difference between a diocese and an archdiocese.

All the Bishops in a country then constitute a Conference of Bishops, or Episcopal Conference.

However, the Bishop in his diocese remains the main unit of the Church, and all the Bishops of the world together constitute the College of Bishops, gathered around the Pope, who is the BIshop of Rome.

Our 3 Churches form part of the Archdiocese of Cardiff. Our Archbishop is Archbishop Mark O’Toole, who was appointed our new Archbishop in 2022. He has been upto now Bishop of Plymouth. He was installed in Cardiff on 20 June. You can find out more about our archdiocese on the official website. Our province is called the Cardiff or Welsh Province, and our Bishops’ Conference is that of England and Wales. Their website is full of information on the Church in our country.

Until 2023 our archdiocese was divided into eight deaneries, which are groupings of parishes where we try to collaborate, especially on those projects which benefit from being undertaken together. Archbishop reduced these to four.  Our deanery is Cardiff, and the leader of our deanery is currently Fr Brian Gray, parish priest of St Cadoc’s, St John Lloyd and Blessed sacrament parishes. In 2023 he replaced Canon Matthew, who held the post from 2016.