RICHMOND, Diocese of. - A diocese and city in the State of Virginia (U.S.A.). A suffragan of Baltimore, it has an area of 34,008 square miles with 2,837,297 inhabitants, of whom 84,338 are Catholics. In the diocese there are 221 priests, of whom 85 are religious from 14 different congregations, 84 parishes and 38 missions, 20 female congregations with 504 religious, 37 seminarians, 1 college, 4 orphanages and 2 hospitals.
The diocese was erected by Pius VII (brief Inter multiplices, 11 July 1820). The territory, detached from Baltimore, comprises the entire State of Virginia, except for several counties (the dioceses of Wheeling, erected on 23 July 1850, and of Wilmington, erected on 3 March 1868), and also includes some counties in the State of West Virginia. The first bishop, Msgr. Patrick Kelley, consecrated on 24 Aug. 1820, was transferred in July 1822 to the see of Waterford and Lismore (Ireland), and the see of R. returned to the jurisdiction of Baltimore until 1841, when the second bishop of R., R. V. Whelan, was consecrated.
The Catholic history of the diocese goes back to 1526, when a Spanish colony, with Dominican missionaries, settled in Virginia, there where in 1607 the English founded Jamestown. But already the following year the Spaniards withdrew because of the outbreak of a revolution and the hostility of the natives. A second expedition with Jesuit missionaries took place in 1570; but the Spaniards did not succeed and returned to Ascacan, whence they had set out in 1571; the missionaries were slaughtered by the Indians. From that time until the erection of the diocese there were only isolated attempts at evangelization, among them that of the priest Jean Dubois, future bishop of New York, who came to Norfolk in 1791 and remained there a few months, saying the first Mass at R. toward the end of 1791.
Bibliography3 works
Gastone Carriere