CELEBRATING OUR 175TH
BETTER TOGETHER
Today is a significant day in the history of our diocese fifty-one years ago today, on August 21, 1974, Bishop Joseph Hodges obtained approval from the Holy See to redraw the boundaries of the diocese to correspond with the state, and further renaming the diocese the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston. This change was on the heels of another divide to the Diocese of Richmond (which the Eastern Panhandle of WV previously belonged). While the Richmond diocese gained the most south western territory of the state of Virginia, the Diocese of Arlington had just been formed on Aug. 13, 1974, thus maintaining two diocese within the state of Virginia.How our boundaries used to be:
In 1849, Diocese of Richmond Bishop Richard Vincent Whelan convinced the Church hierarchy in the Archdiocese of Baltimore to divide the Diocese of Richmond into two, divided by the natural barriers of the Allegheny Mountains.
On July 19,1850, the Holy See approved the establishment of the Diocese of Wheeling. The diocese included all of what is now West Virginia except for the eastern panhandle and Potomac highlands, and included several counties in southwestern Virginia, all the way to the Tennessee border.
Four days later, on July 23, 1850, Blessed Pope Pius IX named Bishop Richard Whelan as the first bishop for the diocese.
According to Bishop Whelan’s diocesan records from 1850, churches completed, or nearing completion were in Martinsburg, Harpers Ferry, Bath (Berkeley Springs), Union (Monroe Co.), Sweet Springs, Tazewell Court House (VA), Wytheville (VA), Wheeling, Parkersburg, Howesville, Fairmont, Morgantown, Weston, Braxton Court House, Summersville, Charleston, and Grafton.
Bishop Whelan died at the age of 65 in 1874.
It took 124 years, until 1974, for the Holy See to redraw the boundaries of the diocese to correspond with the state, and further renaming us as the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston.
