Is Italy’s ‘in persona episcopi’ experiment for diocesan mergers ending?

Italy has more dioceses than it needs. But reducing them is far from simple.

No country in the world has as many dioceses united in persona episcopi as Italy.

The cathedral of Italy’s Diocese of San Benedetto del Tronto-Ripatransone-Montalto, recently united ‘in persona episcopi’ with the Diocese of Ascoli Piceno. Ermanon via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).

That’s partly because Italy has a vast number of dioceses to begin with: 226 in …