Pope Leo XIV has appointed Bishop Manuel Nin Güell as apostolic exarch of the Territorial Abbacy of Saint Mary of Grottaferrata, bringing to an end a vacancy that has lasted more than a decade.
The appointment places Bishop Nin at the head of the Territorial Abbacy of Grottaferrata, a jurisdiction of the Italo-Albanian Catholic Church, an Eastern Catholic Church in full communion with the Holy See.
The see has been vacant since 2013, when Abbot Emiliano Fabbricatore retired on reaching the age of 75.
On the same day, Pope Francis appointed Cardinal Marcello Semeraro as apostolic administrator, a post he has held since then.
According to the Annuario Pontificio, the territorial abbacy is among the smallest ecclesiastical jurisdictions in the Catholic Church. It comprises nine faithful, all of whom are male Religious, including four priests.
The abbey operates one parish or quasi-parish, one educational institution and one charitable institution, and recorded seven baptisms in 2024.
A territorial abbacy is a form of ecclesiastical jurisdiction in which an abbot exercises authority equivalent to that of a diocesan bishop over a defined geographical area.
Unlike most abbots, who are subject to the local diocesan bishop, the abbot of a territorial abbacy governs the clergy and faithful of the territory in his own right and reports directly to the Holy See.
Born in 1956, Bishop Nin entered the Order of St Benedict in 1977 and was ordained to the priesthood in 1996. From 1999 to 2016 he served as rector of the Pontifical Greek College in Rome.
In 2016 he was ordained a bishop and appointed apostolic exarch for Catholics of the Byzantine rite resident in Greece, a position he continues to hold.
The Abbey of Grottaferrata was founded in 1004 by St Nilus of Rossano, an Italo-Byzantine monk from Calabria, on land traditionally identified as the site of a former villa belonging to Cicero.
The monastery has remained in continuous operation since its foundation, making it unique among Byzantine-rite monasteries in Italy.
Following the Ottoman conquest of Albanian territories after the defeat of the uprisings led by Skanderbeg, vocations to the abbey increasingly came from Italo-Albanian refugee communities in southern Italy rather than from local Latin-rite populations.
This development shaped the abbey’s identity and aligned it more closely with the Italo-Albanian Catholic Church.
In 1571, during the Counter-Reformation, the Italian Basilian Order of Grottaferrata was formally established by Cardinal Giulio Antonio Santorio.
From the abbey, monks founded daughter houses throughout Sicily and Calabria to serve Albanian-speaking communities and maintain the Byzantine liturgical tradition.
Most of these foundations were later suppressed.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, anti-religious legislation introduced by Enlightenment-influenced governments led to the closure of religious houses and the confiscation of Church property, particularly under the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and later the Kingdom of Italy following the Risorgimento.
Grottaferrata was allowed to remain open after being designated a national monument, with monks permitted to stay as custodians.
In the late 19th century, the Holy See directed that the Divine Liturgy at Grottaferrata be celebrated without Latin additions that had accumulated over previous centuries.
The arrival of monks from suppressed Italo-Albanian houses contributed to the restoration of the abbey’s Byzantine liturgical practice and scholarly activity.
The abbey later supported missionary activity connected to the revival of Eastern Catholic life in Albania.
Among those associated with this period was Blessed Josif Papamihali, a graduate of the Pontifical Greek College, who was killed under communist persecution and beatified in 2016.
Grottaferrata was formally designated a territorial abbacy in 1937.
In addition to the monastery itself, it is responsible for the rectory church of Saint Basil at the Gardens of Sallust in central Rome.