The Diocese of Fall River () is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory, or diocese, of the Catholic Church in southern Massachusetts in the United States. The diocese spans Barnstable County, Bristol County, Dukes County, Nantucket County, and the towns of Marion, Mattapoisett, and Wareham along the south coast of Plymouth County. It is led by a bishop administering the diocese from the mother church, St. Mary's Cathedral in Fall River, Massachusetts. The Diocese of Fall River is a suffragan diocese in the ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Boston. Diocesan statistics The Diocese of Fall River includes 147 parish priests, 90 permanent deacons, 16 religious brothers and 295 religious sisters. It has 96 parishes, 11 missions, a health care center, and five nursing homes.The total Catholic population of the area as of 2013 was approximately 313,115. History Early history Before the American Revolution, the British Province of Massachusetts Bay, which included southern Massachusetts and Cape Cod, had enacted laws prohibiting the practice of Catholicism in the colony. It was even illegal for a priest to reside there. To gain the support of Catholics for the Revolution, colonial leaders were forced to make concessions. Massachusetts enacted religious freedom for Catholics in 1780. Pope Pius VII erected the Diocese of Boston on April 8, 1808, including all of New England in its jurisdiction.The Diocese of Providence was erected by Pope Pius IX on February 17, 1872. The pope removed the counties of Bristol, Barnstable, Dukes and Nantucket in Massachusetts from the Archdiocese of Boston. 1900 to 1970 Pope Pius X erected the Diocese of Fall River on March 12, 1904. He took all of the Massachusetts counties from Diocese of Providence for the new diocese, making it a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Boston. He appointed Father William Stang as the first bishop of Fall River. On May 8, 1904, St. Mary's Cathedral was packed with worshipers for Stang's first mass, with police detachments controlling the crowd, estimated at 25,000 people, on the street outside the building.He established eleven parishes and founded Saint Anne's Hospital in Fall River. One of the new parishes was St. Boniface, a German parish in New Bedford, Massachusetts. After Stang's death on February 2, 1907, Pius X appointed Father Daniel Feehan as the second Bishop of Fall River on July 2, 1907. He was ordained a bishop on September 19, 1907. During his 27-year tenure, Feehan