The story of the Curia of Rovigo, the diocese’s administrative headquarters, is one of a slow move that lasted a thousand years. According to the diocesan archive, as early as the 10th century Bishop Paolo, with the permission of Pope John X, moved his residence from Adria to Rovigo, ‘a healthier and safer city’.
From then on the diocese had two faces. Adria kept the official seat and the Curia. The bishops lived in Rovigo, and part of the administrative records was kept in their residence. Even in the 19th and 20th centuries the diocese still had two bishop’s palaces, one in Adria and one in Rovigo, both restored several times between the 16th and 18th centuries.
The move of 1909
The official transfer came in 1909, when Bishop Boggiani decided to bring the Curia to Rovigo. For about a thousand years the Bishop ‘of Adria’ had lived here: now the machinery of the diocese followed him. Together with the Curia, part of the chapter archive moved too.
In 1938 the pontifical administrator Mgr Folchini began building a new bishop’s palace in Rovigo and sold the old one. The new palace was completed in 1941, under Bishop Mazzocco, who led the diocese from 1936 to 1968. The archive was moved into the new building as well.
A name that recognises history
On 30 September 1986 the diocese officially took the name of Adria-Rovigo. It was the recognition of a fact centuries old.
In recent years the diocesan offices have been gathered on Via Sichirollo. During the renovation of the Curia in 2007, the diocesan archive was housed for a time in the former Church of Sant’Agostino. In July 2008 it moved into its new home in the former Collegio vescovile ‘Angelo Custode’, opened in October of the same year. The Seminary Library is now in the same complex.
The reorganisation of the archive bears a name: Don Alberino Gabrielli, archivist from 1961 to 1994. His Guide-Inventory came out in 1995. It is thanks to that patient work that today we can reconstruct, page by page, the bishops’ long journey from Adria to Rovigo.
