RICHMOND, DIOCESI di. — Diocese and city in the State of Virginia (U. S. A.). A suffragan of Baltimore, it has an area of 34,008 sq. miles, with 2,837,297 inhabitants, of whom 84,338 are Catholics. In the diocese there are 221 priests, 85 of them religious belonging to 14 different congregations, 84 parishes and 38 missions, 20 women’s 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, separated from Baltimore, comprises the entire State of Virginia, except for several counties (diocese 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. Patricio Kelley, consecrated on 24 August 1820, was transferred in July 1822 to the see of Waterford and Lismore (Ireland), and the see of R. again came under 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, accompanied by Dominican missionaries, settled in Virginia, at the place where the English founded Jamestown in 1607. But as early as the following year the Spaniards withdrew because of the outbreak of a revolution and the hostility of the indigenous population. A second expedition with Jesuit missionaries took place in 1570; but the Spaniards did not remain and returned to Ascacan, whence 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, future bishop of Nuova York, who came to Norfolk in 1791 and remained there for several months, celebrating the first Mass at R. toward the end of 1791.