PATTI, DIOCESE OF. — A city and diocese in Sicily, suffragan of Messina, with an area of 1,330 sq. km., a population of 218,000 inhabitants, of whom 217,800 are Catholic, 40 communes, 71 parishes, 180 diocesan priests and 24 regular priests, 7 male religious communities and 31 female (Ann. Pont., 1952, p. 313). Patrons: Sts. Bartholomew and Febronia.
The city lies 76 km from the regional capital, near the ancient Tyndaris, whose Greco-Roman ruins are visible on a steep cliff overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. Little is known of Patti before the Norman era. Count Roger founded there a Benedictine abbey, which he associated with that of Lipari; the two abbeys were united into a single bishopric by the antipope Anacletus II in 1131, but the legitimate institution was effected by Pope Eugenius III in 1157. Boniface IX separated the two sees in 1399. The first autonomous bishop of Patti was Francesco Hermemir; among noteworthy bishops were Bartolomeo Sebastiani (1548), who took an active part in the Council of Trent, and Alfonso de los Cameros (1652), who founded the seminary. Patti suffered severe damage during the Sicilian Vespers; in the 16th century it was burned during a Turkish raid. It is not rich in monuments; the cathedral is a 14th-century building erected on a pre-existing Norman structure and remodeled in the 18th–19th centuries; it houses the sarcophagus of Queen Adelasia, wife of Roger I and mother of Roger II. In the sacristy are preserved precious Greek and Latin parchments and an interesting treasury. Notable in the commune of Frazzano is the Basilian abbey of S. Filippo di Fragala (11th century), and at Mistretta and Tusa the mother churches with medieval bell towers. Near the ruins of Tyndaris stands the famous 16th-century sanctuary with a miraculous Byzantine statue of the Virgin (the Black Madonna), a destination of numerous pilgrimages.