Qualla: Diocese of Richmond https://qualla.com/diocese-of-richmond en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:07 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/d/q/8/v/diocese-of-richmond-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Diocese of Richmond https://qualla.com/diocese-of-richmond Diocese of Richmond: Introduction https://qualla.com/diocese-of-richmond/ Photo credit Magjozs, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1687, two priests named Edmonds and Raymond were arrested in Norfolk for the crime of being Catholic. Colonial Virginia had enacted some of the harshest anti-Catholic laws in British North America - a Protestant establishment that treated a Mass as something close to sedition. A century later, after the American Revolution, Catholics were still rare enough in Virginia to be served from Maryland by Jesuit circuit-riders. Then on July 11, 1820, Pope Pius VII erected the Diocese of Richmond from territory carved out of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. It took in all of present-day Virginia except two Eastern Shore counties, plus what would later become West Virginia. Its first bishop, an Irishman named Patrick Kelly, arrived in Norfolk in January 1821 and immediately discovered that being a Catholic bishop in Virginia was a job description more theoretical than practical.

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/q/8/v/diocese-of-richmond-wp/dq8v-diocese-of-richmond-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Diocese of Richmond: An Eighteen-Year Vacancy https://qualla.com/diocese-of-richmond/ Photo credit MarkusMark, CC BY-SA 3.0. Kelly didn't last. He opened the diocese's first Catholic school and worked to build out missions, but he was soon entangled in jurisdictional fights with Baltimore. To end the feuding, Rome reassigned him to the Diocese of Waterford and Lismore in Ireland in early 1822, less tha...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/q/8/v/diocese-of-richmond-wp/dq8v-diocese-of-richmond-an-eighteen-year-vacancy.mp3 0:06 2 full Diocese of Richmond: Race, Reform, and a Cathedral https://qualla.com/diocese-of-richmond/ Photo credit Martin Kraft, CC BY-SA 3.0. By the late nineteenth century the diocese had stabilized enough to build. Bishop John Keane founded schools and churches for Black Catholics in the 1880s despite institutional opposition. His successor, Augustine Van de Vyver, oversaw a transformative 1901 gift from philanthropi...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/q/8/v/diocese-of-richmond-wp/dq8v-diocese-of-richmond-race-reform-and-a-cathedral.mp3 0:06 3 full Diocese of Richmond: The Modern Diocese https://qualla.com/diocese-of-richmond/ Photo credit Martin Kraft, CC BY-SA 3.0. Peter Ireton, who became bishop in 1945, ran one of the great expansions in American Catholic history: 42 new parishes, 24 new schools, and a Catholic population that grew from 37,000 to 147,000 during his thirteen years in the chair. His successor John Russell, who took over in ...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/q/8/v/diocese-of-richmond-wp/dq8v-diocese-of-richmond-the-modern-diocese.mp3 0:06 4 full Diocese of Richmond: Reckoning https://qualla.com/diocese-of-richmond/ Photo credit Martin Kraft, CC BY-SA 3.0. The diocese has also lived through the same reckoning that has marked Catholic dioceses across the United States. In February 2019, Bishop Barry Knestout - appointed by Pope Francis in 2017 - released a list of 42 priests with credible and substantiated accusations of sexual abus...

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]]> Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/q/8/v/diocese-of-richmond-wp/dq8v-diocese-of-richmond-reckoning.mp3 0:06 5 full