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A particular Church, in Catholic theology and Canon law, is any of the individual constituent ecclesial communities in full communion with Rome that are part of the Catholic Church as a whole. These can be the local Churches mentioned in Canon 368 of the Code of Canon Law: "Particular Churches, in which and from which the one and only Catholic Church exists, are principally dioceses. Unless the contrary is clear, the following are equivalent to a diocese: a territorial prelature, a territorial abbacy, a vicariate apostolic, a prefecture apostolic and a permanently established apostolic administration."[1] Or they can be aggregations of such local Churches that share a specific liturgical, theological and canonical tradition, namely, the western Latin Rite or Latin Church and the various Eastern Catholic Churches that the Second Vatican Council’s Decree on the Catholic Eastern Churches Orientalium Ecclesiarum[2] called "particular Churches or rites" and that are also referred to as autonomous ("sui iuris") particular Churches.