The Diocese of Wheeling–Charleston (Latin: Dioecesis Vhelingensis–Carolopolitana) is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or diocese, of the Catholic Church comprising West Virginia in the United States. It is a suffragan diocese in the ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Baltimore.
On May 1, 2026, Pope Leo XIV appointed Evelio Menjivar-Ayala as the bishop of the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston. The diocese maintains two cathedrals: the Cathedral of Saint Joseph in Wheeling and the Basilica of the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Charleston.
== History ==
=== 1700 to 1850 ===
Before the American Revolution, few Catholics lived in present-day West Virginia, then part of the British Colony of Virginia. The colonial government in Virginia in the late 1600s had outlawed the practice of Catholicism in the colony.
After the end of the American Revolution in 1783, Pope Pius VI erected the Prefecture Apostolic of the United States in 1784, encompassing the entire United States. Five years later, he converted the prefecture into the Diocese of Baltimore.
With the 1786 passage of Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, proposed by future US President Thomas Jefferson, Catholics were granted religious freedom in the new state of Virginia. Pope Pius VII erected the Diocese of Richmond in 1820, taking all of Virginia (except for two eastern counties) and present day West Virginia from the Archdiocese of Baltimore. The pope named Patrick Kelly as the first bishop of the new diocese. The first Catholic parish in Wheeling was St. James, a small log cabin church established in 1822 to serve Irish and German immigrants.
During the 1840s, Richard Vincent Whelan was serving as the second bishop of Richmond. He became concerned that his growing diocese was too vast to administer. He therefore requested that the Vatican divide the diocese into two, using the Allegheny Mountains as a natural boundary.
=== 1850 to 1894 ===
Pope Pius IX on July 19, 1850, erected the Diocese of Wheeling, containing the area of Virginia south of the Pennsylvania state border and west of the Allegheny Mountains. Pius IX appointed Whelan as the first bishop of the new diocese.
During his first year as bishop, Whelan founded Wheeling Hospital, the only medical facility between Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Cincinnati, Ohio. Three years later, a contingent of religious sisters of the Sisters of Saint Joseph arrived from MIssouri to staff it. Today it is WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital. Whelan in 1856 opened the Children; Home, an orphanage in Wheeling that was also staffed by the Sisters of St. Joseph. Today it is the St. John's Home for Children.
During Whelan's 24-year tenure as bishop, he built 42 churches and opened nine schools. The first church in Charleston, Sacred Heart, was constructed in 1869. By the time of his death in 1874, the Catholic population of the diocese numbered around 18,000.
Pope Leo XIII replaced Whelan with John Kain from Wheeling in 1875. After 18 years, Leo XIII named Kain as coadjutor archbishop of the Archdiocese of St. Louis in 1893 and appointed Patrick Donahue of Baltimore as the new bishop of Wheeling in 1894.
=== 1894 to 1948 ===
Donahue established 38 parishes, six missions, four hospitals, two monasteries, an orphanage and several schools in the diocese. He also established the first official diocesan periodical, The Church Calendar, in 1895 and held the sixth diocesan synod in 1899. The number of priests serving the diocese more than tripled and the number of Catholics increased from 20,000 to 62,000. For all these many achievements, he earned the nickname of the "Great Builder." The Pallottine Missionary Sisters in 1913 opened Sacred Heart Hospital in Richwood, their first hospital in West Virginia. They established a second hospital in 1921, St. Joseph's Hospital in Buckhannon.
In 1922, Pope Pius XI appointed John Swint as an auxiliary bishop of Wheeling. When Donahue died later that year, the pope named Swint as Donahue's replacement. While the diocese had long served the Italian, Irish, and Polish immigrant groups, the major population growth came during Swint's tenure. In 1924, the Pallottines opened St. Mary's Hospital in Huntington in 1924. Today it is St. Mary's Medical Center.
During Swint's 40 years as bishop, the population of the diocese doubled. He oversaw the building of a new cathedral, 100 churches, 52 elementary and high schools.
=== 1948 to 1960 ===
In 1948, Swint threatened to excommunicate any Catholic women from the diocese who participated in the Miss West Virginia competition for the Miss America pageant. He called the pageant "pagan" and stated that if "nakedness" were removed from the pageant, it would "fall to pieces". Two Catholic women withdrew from competition. However, a third Catholic contestant, Mariruth Ford, ignored Swint's ban and participated, winning the competition.
In 1952, Swint condemned the planned opening of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Parkersburg that would provide contraception and other health care services to women. He said it was part of a national plan by doctors to break the Catholic Church's ban on artificial birth control. Swint received the personal title of archbishop from the Vatican in 1954.In 1954, Swint opened Wheeling College, to be run by the Society of Jesus. Today it is Wheeling University.
=== 1960 to 1985 ===
In 1961, Pope John XXIII appointed Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Hodges of Richmond as coadjutor bishop in Wheeling to assist Swint. Swint died the next year and Hodges automatically succeeded him as bishop.
Hodges dedicated much of his administration to implementing the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the diocese, establishing a liturgical commission, a priests' senate, the Sisters' Council, and the Cursillo movement. A strong supporter of ecumenism, Hodges established a Commission for Religious Unity in 1964, co-founded the Joint Commission of Roman Catholics and Episcopalians in 1978 with the episcopal bishop of West Virginia, and joined the West Virginia Council of Churches in 1981. He mandated parish councils in 1968, introduced extraordinary ministers to the diocese in 1970 and permanent deacons in 1975, and renovated the exterior and interior of St. Joseph's Cathedral in Wheeling in 1973.
When the State of West Virginia was admitted to the Union in 1863 during the American Civil War, the new state line with Virginia did not match the diocesan boundaries. Some West Virginia parishes remained in the Diocese of Richmond while some Virginia parishes went to the Diocese of Wheeling. In May 1974, Pope Paul VI remedied this geographic disparity by transferring the West Virginia parishes to the Diocese of Wheeling and the Virginia parishes to the Diocese of Richmond. Paul VI renamed the Diocese of Wheeling as the Diocese of Wheeling–Charleston in August 1974. He designated the Church of the Sacred Heart in Charleston, West Virginia as the co-cathedral. Hodges died in 1985.
=== 1985 to present ===
Pope John Paul II named Auxiliary Bishop Francis B. Schulte from the Archdiocese of Philadelphia as the new bishop of Wheeling-Charleston in 1985. In 1988, the pope appointed Reverend Bernard Schmitt as auxiliary bishop of the diocese. A year later, John Paul II appointed Schulte as archbishop of the Archdiocese of New Orleans and replaced him in West Virginia with Schmitt. Schmitt resigned in 2004 and John Paul II replaced him with Michael J. Bransfield from Philadelphia. Pope Benedict XVI raised Sacred Heart to a minor basilica on November 9, 2009.
In 2018, Pope Francis accepted the resignation of Bransfield and appointed Archbishop William E. Lori as apostolic administrator. Francis then instructed Lori to investigate allegations of sexual harassment of adults by Bransfield. In 2019, Francis appointed Auxiliary Bishop Mark E. Brennan from Baltimore as the new bishop of Wheeling-Charleston.
The former principal of Parkersburg Catholic High School in Parkersburg, John Golebiewski, sued the diocese in May 2020. Golebiewski said that the school declined to renew his contract for the upcoming school year because he had alleged misconduct by the school's chaplain and its football coach. The diocese responded in September 2020 that it had reviewed Golebiewski's allegations, determining that they were not credible; it gave no reasons for his dismissal.
Brennan in February 2021 reinstated the diocesan advisory council, which had not met since 2006. On May 1, 2026, Pope Leo XIV accepted Brennan's resignation and appointed Evelio Menjivar-Ayala, Auxilary Bishop of Washington, as the tenth bishop of the diocese.
== Tracy portfolio ==
The Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston owns a multi-million dollar investment portfolio that it received as a donation by Sara Tracy in the early 20th century. Born in 1827 in New York City, Tracy inherited a large estate from her brother, Edward Tracy. While on an ocean voyage to Rome in 1899, she met Bishop Donahue. During the trip, Donahue counseled Tracy on a personal matter. As they disembarked in Europe, Tracy gave him a $5,000 donation for the diocese.
During her lifetime Tracy continued to support the diocese and willed her entire estate to Donahue. The proceeds allowed Donahue to establish Wheeling College in Wheeling, build other facilities across the diocese and found several outreach ministries. The investments included oil and gas lands that produced substantial revenues for the diocese over the decades. However, when he was bishop, Bransfield improperly withdrew funds from the Tracy portfolio for his personal use. Bishop Brennan was the first bishop to fully disclose and list the value of the investments from the portfolio.
As of 2020, the Tracy portfolio exceeded $286 million in value. Annual royalty revenues were $13.9 million, with total revenues from investments exceeding $15 million for that year.
== Sexual abuse ==
Felix Owino, a professor at Wheeling University, pleaded guilty in September 2010 to inappropriately touching an 11-year-old. He was sentenced in February 2011 to five years' prison with all but nine months suspended. After finishing his prison term, the US Department of Homeland Security deported Owino to Kenya.
In November 2018, the diocese released the names of 18 clergy who had been "credibly accused" of sexually abusing minors while serving in the diocese. The list also revealed the names of 13 priests who were transferred to the diocese after being accused of committing sex abuse in other dioceses. Reported incidents of sex abuse on this list date back to 1950. Eleven of the clergy on the list were deceased at the time of its release.
In March 2019, West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey sued the diocese, alleging violations of West Virginia consumer protection laws. Morrisey said that the diocese advertised itself as a safe place for children while "knowingly employed pedophiles and failed to conduct adequate background checks" on workers in Catholic schools and camps. The lawsuit was novel because it named a diocese as a defendant, rather than individual priests, and because it attempted to make use of consumer-protection law to obtain legal discovery of church records. A circuit court judge dismissed the lawsuit in November 2019. In November 2020, the West Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the consumer protection law did not apply to the diocese.
Four lawsuits were filed against the diocese in 2020 regarding Victor Frobas, a priest and teacher at St. Paul's Catholic School in Weirton in the early 1980s. The lawsuit asserted that the diocese was aware of sexual abuse allegations against Frobas from his time in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia as well as in Weirton. In 1988, Frobas pleaded guilty to sexually molesting minors in Kirkwood, Missouri and was sentenced to four years in prison there. He died in 1993, soon after being indicted in Massachusetts on sexual abuse charges.
== Bransfield scandal ==
In July 2019, Francis banned Bransfield from public ministry and from residing in the diocese. Francis also told Bransfield that he must consult with the diocese on a financial repayment plan. However, the pope chose not to laicize him. In August 2019, the diocese settled a sexual abuse lawsuit brought against it and Bransfield. The plaintiff, a former altar server, claimed that Bransfield had sexually assaulted him in 2014.
In September 2019, a former seminarian known as JE sued the diocese and Bransfield. The plaintiff cited several occasions in 2017 and 2018 in which Branfield kissed and fondled him. In July 2023, JE and the diocese reached a financial settlement to the case. In October 2019, the Washington Post reported that police were investigating an allegation that Bransfield molested a nine-year-old girl during a September 2012 pilgrimage to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. The diocese was subpoenaed for documents in connection with the investigation. Bransfield denied the allegation.
In November 2019, Bishop Brennan ordered Bransfield to take the following actions:
Pay more legal settlements to his victims
Pay the diocese $792,638 in restitution
Pay the Internal Revenue Service $110,000 in back taxes
Apologize "for the severe emotional and spiritual harm his actions caused" to his victims and to the diocese
Also in November 2019, Brennan revoked some of Bransfield's retirement benefits and barred him from being buried in the diocesan cemetery. The directive was believed to be a rare or unprecedented example of a bishop being ordered to pay restitution. The Vatican later agreed to lower Bransfield's required restitution. In August 2020, Bransfield paid the diocese $441,000 and issued an apology:“I am writing to apologize for any scandal or wonderment caused by words or actions attributed to me during my tenure as Bishop of the Wheeling–Charleston Diocese.”Bransfield died in May 2026.
== Bishops ==
=== Bishops of Wheeling ===
Richard Vincent Whelan (1850–1874)
John Joseph Kain (1875–1893), appointed Coadjutor Archbishop of St. Louis and later succeeded to that see
Patrick James Donahue (1894–1922)
John Joseph Swint (1922–1962), appointed Archbishop ad personam in 1954
Joseph Howard Hodges (1962–1974; coadjutor bishop 1961–1962); title changed with title of diocese
=== Bishops of Wheeling–Charleston ===
Joseph Howard Hodges (1974–1985)
Francis B. Schulte (1985–1989), appointed Archbishop of New Orleans
Bernard William Schmitt (1989–2004)
Michael Joseph Bransfield (2004–2018)
Mark E. Brennan (2019–2026)
Evelio Menjivar-Ayala (Bishop-elect)
=== Auxiliary bishops of Wheeling ===
John Joseph Swint (1922), appointed Bishop of Wheeling
James Edward Michaels, S.S.C.M.E. (1973–1974); title changed with title of diocese
=== Auxiliary bishops of Wheeling–Charleston ===
James Edward Michaels, S.S.C.M.E. (1974–1987)
Bernard William Schmitt (1988–1989), appointed bishop of Wheeling–Charleston
=== Coadjutor bishop ===
Thomas John McDonnell (1951–1961); died before succession
== Vicariates ==
The Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston has seven vicariates:
Wheeling
Parkersburg
Charleston
Beckley
Weston
Clarksburg
Martinsburg
== Education ==
As of 2026, the Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston had six high schools and 18 elementary schools.
=== Present high schools ===
Charleston Catholic High School – Charleston
Madonna High School – Weirton
Notre Dame High School – Clarksburg
Parkersburg Catholic High School – Parkersburg
St. Joseph Central Catholic High School – Huntington
Wheeling Central Catholic High School – Wheeling
=== Former schools ===
Bishop Donahue Memorial High School – McMechen
De Sales Heights Academy – Parkersburg
Mount de Chantal Visitation Academy – Wheeling
St. Francis de Sales Central Catholic – Morgantown. Now operates pre-k through 8th grade only.
St. Joseph Preparatory Seminary – Parkersburg
St. Margaret Mary (Elementary) – Parkersburg
St. Patrick – Weston
== Universities ==
Wheeling University – Wheeling
Catholic International University – online university headquartered in Charleston
== See also ==
Historical list of the Catholic bishops of the United States
List of the Catholic dioceses of the United States
List of Roman Catholic archdioceses (by country and continent)
List of Roman Catholic dioceses (alphabetical) (including archdioceses)
List of Roman Catholic dioceses (structured view) (including archdioceses)
== References ==
== External links ==
Roman Catholic Diocese of Wheeling–Charleston Official Site
Catholic Hierarchy Profile of the Diocese of Wheeling–Charleston