The Eritrean Catholic Archeparchy of Asmara, officially the Archeparchy of Asmara ( or ), more informally Asmara of the Eritreans, is the metropolitan see of the Eritrean Catholic Church, a sui iuris Eastern Catholic Church whose territory corresponds to that of the State of Eritrea in the Horn of Africa. It depends on the Roman Congregation for the Oriental Churches.
As head of an autonomous particular church, the Metropolitan Archeparch, currently Menghesteab Tesfamariam, is mentioned by name, after the Pope, in the liturgies celebrated within the suffragan eparchies of Barentu, Keren and Segheneyti.
The Eritrean Catholic Church, like the Ethiopian Catholic Church, from which it was separated in 2015, uses in its liturgy the Ethiopic variant of the Alexandrian Rite in the Ge'ez language. It is the Eastern Catholic counterpart of the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church, which was granted autocephaly in 1993, and is headed by an Orthodox Patriarch, who also is based in the Eritrean capital. Since the Eritrean Catholic Church is a metropolitanate, not a patriarchal or major archiepiscopal Church, the power of its metropolitan and council of hierarchs is limited to its own territory, which covers all and only Eritrea, (East Africa or, more precisely, the Horn of Africa). Faithful outside of Eritrea are immediately subject to the Pope.
The cathedral of the sui iuris metropolitan see is Kidane Mehret Cathedral in Asmara, the capital city of Eritrea.
Statistics
In 2015, the Archeparchy pastorally served 31,850 Catholics (1% of the 3,258,000 population) in 59 parishes, with 336 priests (20 diocesan, 316 religious), 2 permanent deacons, 602 men religious, 498 sisters and 206 seminarians.
Metropolitan sui iuris Church
While patriarchal and major archiepiscopal Eastern Catholic Churches may be structured as provinces, each headed by a metropolitan – the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church has several, two of them in the United States and Canada – a metropolitan sui iuris Church, such as the Eritrean Catholic Church, has by definition only a single metropolitan of a fixed see.
The Archeparchy of Asmara is the episcopal see of the single metropolitan of the Eritrean Catholic Church and has the following suffragan sees, all of which are daughter eparchies, having once been part of the then Eparchy of Asmara, which for a while covered the whole of Eritrea: Eritrean Catholic Eparchy of Barentu (1995) Eritrean Catholic Eparchy of Keren (1995) Eritrean Catholic Eparchy of Segheneyti (2012)
History
In 1839 Saint Giustino de Jacobis, an Italian Vincentian priest, arrived in the area that is now Eritrea and northern Ethiopia. He chose to use the local liturgy in Ge'ez, rather than the Roman Rite in Latin. Attracted by his learning and sanctity, many local clergy and laity entered into communion with the Catholic Church. They established an Ethiopic-Rite Catholic community under the care of the Apostolic Vicariate of Abyssinia (now Ethiopic Metropolitanate sui juris of Addis Abeba), which had its headquarters at Keren and was under the care of the Vincentian Fathers.
After Italy took possession of Eritrea and declared it an Italian colony, the Holy See, in view of the changed situation, set up on 19 September 1894 a separate Apostolic Prefecture of Eritrea, which was entrusted to Italian Capuchins. In the following year, the governor of the colony expelled the remaining Vincentian priests, who were French, on the unfounded suspicion of having encouraged armed resistance.
In 1911 the Apostolic Prefecture was promoted to the rank of Apostolic Vicariate, headed therefore by a titular bishop, and the headquarters were moved from Keren to Asmara.