Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Mohilev

[1] The Archdiocese was erected as the Diocese of White Ruthenia on 14 December 1772 by the Russian empress Catherine the Great,[2] in a unilateral action independent of Rome.

Its territory was split off from the Dioceses of Vilnius (45 parishes including Mohilev), Inflanty and Smolensk, part of the Gniezno Metroplis.

On 17 January 1782,[3] Catherine elevated the diocese to Archdiocese of Mohilev (without suffragan sees), and in 1783 these actions were recognised by Pope Pius VI in the bull Onerosa pastoralis officii.

[5] In 1798, the territorial division of the archdiocese was stabilized, comprising five suffragan dioceses: Vilnius, Samogitia, Lutsk-Zhytomyr, Kamianets, and Minsk.

Mogilev is a city in present-day Belarus, and with the demise of the Soviet Union the Archdiocese's territory and title were merged into its former suffragan of Minsk (which had often been governed ad interim by its Metropolitan, as Apostolic administrator), in the newly independent country's capital, to create the Archdiocese of Minsk-Mohilev on 13 April 1991.