Vallo di Lucania, Diocese of

VALLO DI LUCANIA, DIOCESE. - City and diocese in the province of Salerno. It has an area of 3000 sq km with a population of 152,000 inhabitants, all Catholics, distributed in 107 parishes, served by 90 diocesan priests and 25 regulars; it has a minor seminary, 8 male religious communities and 38 female (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 418).

In the territory of Lucania there was originally the ancient diocese of Pesto, whose protector was the martyr Vitus, who is commemorated in the Jeronymian Martyrology on 15 June in Lucania (p. 321; BBL, 8711). In 592 St. Gregory the Great ordered Felix, bishop of Agropoli, to visit the dioceses of Velia, Buxentum (Capo della Foresta) and Blanda Iulia, which had remained without bishops. Of the first and the third the names of the earlier prelates are not known; of Buxentum a certain Rusticus is known at the beginning of the 6th century; of Blanda Iulia the bishop Romanus is then known, who was present at the Roman Synod of 5 July 595. L. Duchesne and F. Lanzoni held that Felix was the bishop of Pesto who had withdrawn to Acropoli because of the Lombard invasion; a bishop of Pesto is present in Rome at the Council of 649. Pesto was then destroyed in 930 by the Saracens; the diocese then moved to Capaccio, but until the 12th century the bishops kept its title; in 1159, with bishop Leonardo, the title of Capaccio (Caputaquen) begins to be found; subsequently the sees of Blanda Iulia and of Acropoli were united to Capaccio. In 1568, however, the episcopal see was transferred to Diano; in 1851 Pope Pius IX, with the bull Cum propter insistiae dilectionem of 16 July, created the diocese of V. as a suffragan of Salerno, and on the following 12 October the local church of S. Pantaleone was elevated to a cathedral. On 24 Nov. 1945 the title of the diocese was changed to V. di L. Besides those already mentioned, among the bishops are remembered: Arnolfo, who in 1179 took part in the Lateran Council; the monk Pietro Matta de Haro (1611); Cardinal Francesco Brancacci (1627); Tommaso Caraffa (1639); Giovanni della Pace (1684). On Monte Sacro (1705 m), dominating the whole region of Cilento, stands the much-venerated sanctuary of the Madonna di Novi Velia and of the S. Monte di Novi. In the diocese there were the two Basilian monasteries of S. Maria di Centola and of S. Niccolò di Controne.

Enrico Josi