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 George Stack, who was appointed our new Archbishop on 19th April 2011. He has been upto now an Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster. He was installed in Cardiff on 20th June. You can find out more about our archdiocese here. 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 the transfer of Archbishop Peter, Fr Matthew was chairman of the archdiocesan Council of Priests, one of the main advisory bodies to the Archbishop. Archbishop Stack asked him to chair the first meeting of the new and expanded Council in October 2011.

Our archdiocese is divided into eight deaneries, which are groupings of parishes where we try to collaborate, especially on those projects which benefit from being undertaken together. Our deanery is Cardiff East, and the leader of our deanery is currently Fr Allan Davies Hale, parish priest of St John Lloyd parish.