In 1842, the Propaganda Fide created the Apostolic Vicariate of Central Oceania that included New Caledonia, Tonga, Samoa and Fiji Islands.

This lost territory with establishment by canonical erection by the Holy See on August 20, 1850, of the Vicariate Apostolic of the Navigators' Archipelago, entrusted to the Society of Mary (Marists).

The vicariate apostolic was elevated to the Diocese of Apia on June 21, 1966, and made suffragan to the metropolitan see of Suva, Fiji.

[1] On 24 April 2023, Archbishop Alapati Lui Mataeliga was airlifted to Auckland Hospital, in New Zealand and died in the early hours of the following morning.

[2] As the metropolitan see, the archdiocese has two suffragans: the Diocese of Samoa–Pago Pago and the Mission Sui Iuris of Tokelau.