Roman Catholic Diocese of Sansepolcro
The diocese of Sansepolcro was a Latin-rite Catholic diocese in Tuscany, central Italy. It began as the Benedictine Monastery of Saint John the Evangelist of San Sepolcro, founded in 1013 in the territory of the Diocese of Città di Castello. Over the centuries the monastery received many privileges from popes, and Camaldolese monks appear in records there from 1137.
In the 14th century the town faced political upheaval and a major earthquake in 1352 that caused heavy damage. The Camaldolese monastery’s influence was affected by conflicts in the region, including a period of Ghibelline occupation in the 1350s.
In 1515 Pope Leo X issued a bull turning the monastery church of Saint John into a cathedral and appointing Abbot Galeazzo as the first bishop of Borgo San Sepolcro; the see began functioning more fully when Graziani was appointed in 1520. The diocese gained some territory from nearby sees, and a cathedral chapter was created. The new diocese was a suffragan of the archbishop of Florence.
The diocese remained in existence for several centuries, even as it ceded some territory in 1975 to Cesena and Forlì. In the 1980s, church-state agreements led to reorganizing small dioceses to form larger ones. On 30 September 1986, Pope John Paul II merged Arezzo, Cortona, and Borgo San Sepolcro into the new Diocese of Arezzo-Cortona-Sansepolcro, with Arezzo as the seat; Cortona and San Sepolcro became co-cathedrals, and the merged diocese had a single tribunal, seminary, and governing bodies.
Today the territory of the former Borgo San Sepolcro diocese is part of the Diocese of Arezzo-Contona-Sansepolcro.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 21:57 (CET).