TheDiocese of Tiraspol was aLatin Church diocese of theCatholic Church on Czarist/Soviet-controlled territory in and around what is now the republic ofMoldova but also in the current territory of Russia and Ukraine. On 11 February 2002, it was suppressed, its territory being merged into the RussianDiocese of Saint Clement at Saratov.
In the fourteenth century the town ofTiraspol had served as the cathedral see of theDiocese of Kherson, now atitular see.[1]
TheDiocese of Tiraspol (Dioecesis Tiraspolitanus) was established on 3 July 1848 on Czarist territory, split off as asuffragan see of the MetropolitanArchdiocese of Mohilev. The Catholic population was largely German in ethnic origin, although there were also significant Polish and Armenian Catholic communities. During the second half of the eighteenth century large numbers of German colonists went to Russia at the request of theEmpress Catherine II. These emigrants were chiefly from Bavaria, Wurtemberg, Saxony, Alsace-Lorraine, the Tyrol, and Switzerland.[2]
The see city of the diocese wasSaratov rather thanTiraspol; the choice of Tiraspol for the name of the diocese may have been because the city had been the cathedral city of the fourteenth century diocese ofKherson.[2]
The first Roman Catholic bishop of Tiraspol, appointed in 1850, was Ferdinand Helanus Kahn, OP, a GermanDominican.Wincenty Lipski, a Pole, was appointed auxiliary bishop in 1856. During his tenure, theItalian Church of the Assumption in Mariupol, was opened inMariupol, serving a community of sea captains and merchants.[3] Upon Kahn's death in 1864, he became apostolic administrator until 1872.[4]
Bishop Kessler expanded the seminary, founded a publishing house, supported the work of male and female religious orders, visited all parishes of the giant diocese, and conducted 75,000 confirmations.[5] Under Soviet rule, the diocese, as with the structures of many other churches and religious communities, was the subject of repression. Bishop Kessler went into exile in 1918,[6] and the see of Tiraspol became formally vacant on his death in 1933. Meanwhile, there were attempts to organise the diocese under a series ofapostolic administrators, viz.: Johannes Roth, Aleksander Frison, and Augustin Baumtrog, but these attempts ended in increased repression, and in two cases, their execution (Frison in 1937, Roth in 1938).[7] The former St. Klemens Cathedral became a movie theatre.
The diocese lost territory in 1921 to the RomanianDiocese of Iaşi (this territory became, on 28 October 1993, theApostolic Administration of Moldova, elevated to the diocese of Chisinau in 2001, covering the post-soviet republic of that name).
The diocese remained inactive, but formally in existence, until its formal suppression in 2002, when the newdiocese of St Clement in Saratov was erected, incorporating territory within Russia belonging to the former diocese of Tiraspol. Territory of the former diocese now situated inMoldova andTransnistria (including the city of Tiraspol) was assigned to theApostolic Administration of Moldova, erected in 1993. Territory of the former diocese in southernUkraine is now part of theDiocese of Odesa-Simferopol.
Southern territories in Caucasus (Georgia,Azerbaijan andArmenia) became on 30 December 1993 part of theApostolic Administration of the Caucasus with the decreeQuo aptius (the last vatican document about the Diocese of Tiraspol).
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