Diocese of SACRAMENTO. – Diocese and city in the State of California (U.S.A.); suffragan of San Francisco.
It covers a territory of 53,400 sq. miles with a total population of 778,625 inhabitants, of whom 202,475 are Catholics. One hundred fifty-eight priests, of whom nineteen are religious belonging to seven different congregations, exercise the sacred ministry in seventy parishes, twenty-one chapels, and seventy-two missions. There are also thirteen female congregations with 274 sisters, fifty seminarians, three orphanages, and five hospitals. The diocese of Sacramento was formed from the Apostolic Vicariate of Marysville. The Apostolic Vicariate of Marysville was erected in 1861 with only four priests. The first Catholics settled in the mining regions. The first Apostolic Vicar was Mgr. Eugenio O’Connell, an Irishman, consecrated Bishop of Flaviopolis in Dublin on 3 February 1861. Thanks to his work, by 1866 the Apostolic Vicariate had seventeen priests and thirty-five churches.
On 20 March 1868, Pius IX raised the Apostolic Vicariate to the status of a diocese under the name of Grass Valley; Leo XIII changed its boundaries on 16 May 1886 and transferred the see to Sacramento.