the students when he is required to do so. The present bishop is Joseph Schirò, titular of Neocæsarea.[1]
But this one bishop at Rome was not enough for the Italo-Greeks of the south. In 1717 an Albanian priest, former student of the Greek College, Stephen Rodotà, came to Rome and explained to Pope Clement XI (1700-1721) the needs of his people. The Pope then, after some provisional measures, founded the college at San Benedetto Ullano (p. 161), and in it ordered that there should be an ordaining bishop for the Albanians of Calabria, on the same footing as the one at Rome. Felix Samuel Rodotà was the first rector of the college and the first Calabrian Byzantine ordaining bishop (1732). This line also continues regularly to the present time. At first the bishop resided at the college at San Benedetto; then he migrated with it to San Demetrio Corone (p. 162). Of late years, owing to difficulties with the administration of the college (now secularized), he has a house at Naples. The last bishop was John Barcia, titular of Croia in Albania.[2] Then in 1784 the Albanians of Sicily asked and obtained of Pius VI (1775-1799) the same privilege. The first bishop of their line was George Stassi (1784-1801), the present one is Paul Schirò, titular of Benda in Albania, ordained in 1904.[3] He resides at the Greek-Albanian College at Palermo. These three bishops are to be considered as auxiliaries of the Latin Ordinaries. They have no ordinary jurisdiction; but they have a considerable measure of delegate jurisdiction for the churches, clergy, and faithful of their rite. In theory, perhaps, each Ordinary in whose diocese Albanians live should have such an auxiliary; but there are not enough Albanians to make this worth while. So the Byzantine auxiliary in Calabria gets his faculties from the Archbishop of Rossano and the Bishops of Cassano and San Marco; the Sicilian auxiliary from the Archbishops of Palermo and Monreale.
Dating, perhaps, partly even from the time of the Norman conquest, the Italo-Greeks had evolved certain peculiarities of rite which lead some people to speak of a special "Italo-Greek" rite.[4] It hardly amounts to that. But there was (to some extent there still is) considerable latinization among
- ↑ Rodotà, iii, 218-220 gives an account of these bishops down to his time. The complete list is in Charon, "Le XVᵉ Centenaire," p. 48.
- ↑ See the complete list in Charon, op. cit., p. 261. Mgr. Barcia died in 1914; his successor has not been appointed.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Rodotà, for instance, uses this expression always.
