Diocese of Richmond

Erected by Pope Pius VII on July 11, 1820 from the Archdiocese of Baltimore, the Diocese of Richmond became the seventh diocese established in the United States. It covers most of Virginia — from the Richmond metro south through the Tidewater coast and the Shenandoah Valley — and today serves approximately 156 parishes. The diocese's mother church is Sacred Heart Cathedral in Richmond, completed in 1906, and its territory witnessed some of the earliest Catholic missionary activity in North America, including a Spanish Jesuit mission near present-day Williamsburg in 1570.