The town's parish church, just inland of the seafront on Via Don Minzoni, was dedicated to Pope Pius V — the Counter-Reformation pontiff who organised the Christian fleet at Lepanto. Cattolica took its name from this same Catholic militancy in the seventeenth century: a small village that remained loyal to Rome at a moment when the surrounding territory was theologically in flux.
The current church is largely a nineteenth-century rebuild, but it retains an older bell tower and a striking modern set of bronze doors. Worth a brief stop on the way between the centre and the old port.