The Diocese of Arlington () is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Catholic Church in Northern Virginia in the United States. It is a suffragan diocese in the ecclesiastical province of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. The Cathedral of St. Thomas More is the mother church of the diocese.
Michael F. Burbidge has been serving as bishop of the Diocese of Arlington since December 2016. The patron saint of the diocese is the English statesman Thomas More.
Statistics
In 2020, the Diocese of Arlington had 240 priests (186 secular priests; 54 religious priests) and 453,083 Catholics. , the total population within the diocese, Catholic and non-Catholic, was 3,329,860. The diocese comprises 70 parishes across 21 Northern Virginia counties and seven cities:
Counties: Arlington Clarke Culpeper Fairfax Fauquier Frederick King George
Lancaster
Loudoun
Madison
Northumberland
Orange
Page
Prince William
Rappahannock
Richmond
Shenandoah
Spotsylvania
Stafford
Warren
Westmoreland
Cities: Alexandria Fairfax Falls Church Fredericksburg Manassas Manassas Park Winchester
Mission churches
The Diocese of Arlington operates two mission churches for the Diocese of San Juan de la Maguana in the Dominican Republic:
Bánica Mission Parish (St. Francis of Assisi Church) in Bánica
Pedro Santana Mission Parish in Pedro Santana.
Both missions are overseen by the diocesan Office of the Propagation of the Faith. The director of that office is currently Patrick L. Posey.
History
1600 to 1784
Prior to the American Revolution, few Catholics lived in the British Colony of Virginia. In 1634, John Altham, a Jesuit companion of Andrew White, performed missionary work among the Native American tribes living on the south bank of the Potomac River. The colonial government of Virginia soon enacted stringent laws against the practice of Catholicism. During the late 17th century, the few Catholic settlers in northern Virginia, living near Aquia Creek, were attended by John Carroll and other Jesuit missionaries from Maryland.
By 1776, the city of Alexandria had a log chapel with a resident Catholic priest. John Thayer from Boston was stationed at the chapel in 1794.
1784 to 1820
After the American Revolution, Pope Pius VI erected in 1784 the Prefecture Apostolic of the United States encompassing the entire territory of the United States. With the passage in 1786 of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, written by future US President Thomas Jefferson, Catholics were granted religious freedom in the new state of Virginia.
Pius VI erected the Diocese of Baltimore, the first diocese in the United States to replace the prefecture apostolic in 1789.
Francis Neale erected a brick church in Alexandria in 1796 and replaced it with a larger one in 1811. Anthony Kohlmann and future Bishop Bitenedict Fenwick frequently officiated at services in Alexandria.
1820 to 1974
Pope Pius VII erected the Diocese of Richmond on July 11, 1820, including all of Virginia (except two Eastern Shore counties) and the present state of West Virginia. The Northern Virginia area would remain part of this diocese for the next 154 years.
In 1950, nuns from the Sacred Heart Order established a girls' college in Arlington that later became Marymount University. By 1957, eleven new parishes had been founded in Alexandria, Arlington, and Fairfax; in 1946, only eight parishes existed in the region.
1974 to 1999
Pope Paul VI erected the Diocese of Arlington on May 28, 1974, removing its territory from the Diocese of Richmond. The pope appointed Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Welsh of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia as the first bishop of Arlington.
During his tenure, Welsh established six new parishes and dedicated eleven new churches. He established the Office of Migration and Refugee Services in 1975 and the Family Life Bureau in 1977. He also started the diocesan newspaper, The Arlington Catholic Herald.Walsh was the founding president of the board of the Catholic Home Study Institute which became the Catholic Distance University. The number of Catholics in Arlington increased from 154,000 to 179,000 under his tenure. In 1983, Pope John Paul II appointed Welsh as bishop of the Diocese of Allentown.