YAKIMA, DIOCESI of. — City and diocese in the State of Washington (U.S.A.).
It has an area of 17,787 sq. miles and a population of 295,841 inhabitants, of whom 35,000 are Catholics, distributed among 19 parishes served by 22 diocesan and 13 religious priests; it has a seminary, 2 male and 6 female religious communities (Ann. Pont. 1933, p. 457). The diocese was created by Pope Pius XII by the apostolic constitution Divina Providentia of 23 June 1951, through the division of the dioceses of Seattle and Spokane; the church of St Paul the Apostle was constituted as its cathedral. Moreover, by the apostolic constitution Dominici gregis, issued on the same date, the same Pontiff elevated the church of Seattle to a metropolitan see, to which the diocese of Y. was assigned as a suffragan.