CHARLESTON, DIOCESE of. - A city in the State of South Carolina, in the United States, seat of a diocese, suffragan of Baltimore-Washington, it includes the whole territory of South Carolina, with an area of more than 85,000 sq. km.
Out of a population of more than 1,899,804 inhabitants (1940), there were 14,200 Catholics (1947), under the direction of 91 diocesan priests and 39 religious, with 68 churches and chapels, 1 seminary, 4 High Schools with 680 pupils, an academy for girls, and 12 parish schools with 1,903 children. Some of these, together with their attached churches, were founded exclusively for Negroes, beginning in the last century. In 1946 there were 339 conversions.
The first Mass in C. was celebrated in 1786 by an Italian priest before a Catholic colony of only 12 members. As this increased, in 1789 an abandoned Methodist church was purchased and made into the Catholic church of S. Maria, which obtained legal status in 1791. Thus the diocese was erected on 12 July 1820, and its first bishop was the celebrated John England (d. 1842).
Catholic Hierarchy of the United States 1790-1922, Washington 1922, V. indice; D. C. Shearer, Pontificia americana... 1784-1884, ivi 1933, V. indice; P. Guilday, Life and Time of John England First Bishop of C., 2 vols., Nuova York 1937; The Official Catholic Directory 1947, part 2°, ivi 1947, pp. 381-83. Corrado Morin