LARINO, DIOCESE OF. – A city and diocese in the province of Campobasso. It has 72,000 inhabitants, of whom 71,800 are Catholics. There are 22 parishes served by 51 diocesan priests, a seminary, and 11 female religious communities (1949). The diocese is a suffragan of Benevento.
The present-day LARINO arose in the Middle Ages after the destruction of ancient LARINUM, which had been the capital of the Frentani and later a Roman municipium, of which the ruins of the amphitheatre and walls remain. The Cathedral, dedicated to the Assumption, in a Gothic-Puglian style, dates from 1319. The patron saint is St Pardo (26 May). Larinum was a episcopal see as early as the 5th century; mention is made of a Iustus, bishop in 493, and of an Ioannes in 555. John XIII, at the Synod of 969, made it a suffragan of Benevento. The Cathedral was raised to the rank of a minor basilica by an apostolic letter of Pius XI dated 13 July 1928 (AAS, 21 [1929], pp. 147-48). – See plate LVI.