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| | CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Metropolitan |
 | | Metropolitan, in ecclesiastical language, refers to whatever relates to the metropolis, the principal city, or see, of an ecclesiastical province; thus we speak of a metropolitan church, a metropolitan chapter, a metropolitan official, etc. The word metropolitan, used without any qualificative, means the bishop of the metropolitan see, now usually styled archbishop. |
 | | The entire body of rights and duties which canon law attributes to the metropolitan, or archbishop as such, i.e., not for his own diocese, but for those suffragan to him and forming his ecclesiastical province, is called the metropoliticum. |
 | | On this principle the nullity of Napoleon's marriage was decided by the diocesan and the metropolitan officials of Paris, 1810 (Schnitzer, "Kathol. |
| www.newadvent.org /cathen/10244c.htm (652 words) |
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