Abandon church with empty diocese (4)
I believe the answer is:
cede
'abandon' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'church with empty diocese' is the wordplay.
'church' becomes 'CE' (abbreviation for Church of England).
'with' says to put letters next to each other.
'empty' says to hollow out the word (remove centre letters).
'diocese' with its centre removed is 'de'.
'ce'+'de'='CEDE'
(Other definitions for cede that I've seen before include "Give up rights or possession" , "Surrender or yield" , "Give up (territory)" , "Surrender, give up" , "Give up (eg, power)" .)