RICHMOND, DIOCESE OF
Diocese and city in the State of Virginia (U.S.A.). A suffragan of Baltimore, it covers an area of 34,008 square miles with a population of 2,837,297, of whom 84,338 are Catholics. The diocese has 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). Its territory, taken from Baltimore, comprises the entire State of Virginia, except for several counties (dioceses of Wheeling, erected 23 July 1850, and Wilmington, erected 3 March 1868), and also includes some counties in the State of West Virginia. The first bishop, Mgr. Patrick Kelly, consecrated on 24 July 1820, was transferred in July 1822 to the see of Waterford and Lismore (Ireland), and the see of Richmond reverted to the jurisdiction of Baltimore until 1841, when Richard V. Richmond.
The Catholic history of the diocese dates back to 1526, when a Spanish colony with Dominican missionaries settled in Virginia, where the English founded Jamestown in 1607. However, the Spanish withdrew the following year due to a rebellion and hostility from the natives. A second expedition with Jesuit missionaries took place in 1570, but the Spanish did not remain and returned to Ascacán, from where they had departed in 1571; the missionaries were massacred by the Indians. From that time until the erection of the diocese, there were only isolated attempts at evangelization, including that of the priest Jean Dubois, later bishop of New York, who came to Norfolk in 1791 and remained for a few months, saying the first Mass in Richmond toward the end of 1791.