COUTANCES, DIOCESE OF. – Diocese and city in France, in the department of La Manche. It covers 5,800 sq km. It comprises six archpriestships (Coutances, Cherbourg, Valognes, Avranches, Mortain and Saint-Lô), 49 deaneries and 670 parishes, 679 diocesan priests and 43 regular clergy. It has 426,000 inhabitants, of whom 416,000 are Catholics; at Coutances is the major seminary of the diocese (1948).
The bishop of Coutances enjoys the privilege of the sacred pallium, granted by Pius X with a brief of 17 July 1907. Since 1854 he has borne the title of Bishop of Coutances and Avranches, a see suppressed in 1801. Coutances is a suffragan of Rouen. The patroness of the diocese is the Blessed Virgin; the secondary patron is St Lô.
Coutances possesses an almost complete list of its bishops, preserved in three copies from the 12th and 13th centuries; the earliest bishop recorded is Leontianus, who in 511 attended the Council of Orléans.
The abbey of Mont-St-Michel (S. Michael in periculo maris), which lay within the ancient diocese of Avranches, was a much-frequented pilgrimage site in the Middle Ages. It became a Benedictine abbey in 966; the church was consecrated in 1022; it passed to the Benedictine Congregation of St Maur in 1622; and became a collegiate church in 1709. Since the 19th century pilgrimages have resumed and an annual solemn feast is celebrated.