Irish Catholic Bishops' Conference
The Irish Catholic Bishops' Conference is the episcopal conference of the Roman Catholic bishops in Ireland. The conference meets a number of times a year in Maynooth which is the location of St Patrick's College, Ireland's national seminary. While each bishop is autonomous in his own diocese, meetings of the conference give bishops a chance to discuss issues of mutual concern, or issues of national policy.
Image: Michael Paul Gallagher and Cardinal Sean Brady (cropped)
Image: The Prince of Wales at St Patrick's Cathedral, Armagh with archbishops (47950084462) (Eamon Martin cropped)
An episcopal conference, sometimes called a conference of bishops, is an official assembly of the bishops of the Catholic Church in a given territory. Episcopal conferences have long existed as informal entities. The first assembly of bishops to meet regularly, with its own legal structure and ecclesial leadership function, is the Swiss Bishops' Conference, which was founded in 1863. More than forty episcopal conferences existed before the Second Vatican Council. Their status was confirmed by the Second Vatican Council and further defined by Pope Paul VI's 1966 motu proprio, Ecclesiae sanctae.
Headquarters of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines in Manila
Headquarters of the Lithuanian Bishops' Conference in Vilnius
Headquarters of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington, DC