The Diocese of Youngstown () is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Catholic Church, consisting of six counties in Northeast Ohio: Mahoning, Trumbull, Columbiana, Stark, Portage, and Ashtabula. The Diocese of Youngstown is suffragan diocese in the ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Cincinnati. As of 2020, the Diocese of Youngstown contained 86 parishes and had 103 Diocesan Priests, 13 Religious Priests, 84 Permanent Deacons, 26 Male Religious, and 175 Female Religious. It had a Catholic population of 163,650 (13.9% of the total population) in an area totaling . As of 2021, the diocese had 15 seminarians studying at the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, OH; St. Vincent Seminary in Latrobe, PA; St. Mary Seminary in Wickliffe, OH; and other institutions. Early history One of the earliest Roman Catholic communities in this Diocese was in Ashtabula, Ohio. In 1850, a small group of Catholics living in and around Ashtabula petitioned the Diocese of Cleveland for their own parish. A shortage of clergy, however, prevented the assignment of a resident priest. Instead, a visiting priest from Painesville would intermittently undertake an entire day's journey by horse over secondary rural roads. Eventually in 1858, the St. Joseph Mission was established and Father Charles Coquelle took up permanent residence. The inaugural members of the St. Joseph Parish were primarily Irish and German, drawn to Ashtabula by the railroad industry. Initial services were in private homes but in 1860 a small wooden frame church was built. The purchase of an additional five acres in 1877 allowed construction of St. Joseph's two-story brick secondary school staffed by the Sisters of the Humility of Mary. In 1878, the group began to celebrate worship services in a grocery store adjacent to Ashtabula Harbor. Out of this gathering a parish was established in 1890 dedicated to St. Mary as "Mother of Sorrows." A permanent church was constructed nearby in 1898 and remains today. Towards the turn of the century, a large influx of Italian American Catholics made the formation of a third church in Ashtabula desirable. In 1897 land was purchased on the southwest corner of Columbus Avenue and Sibley Street (whose name was changed to 16th street by city government in 1930) and construction of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church began in 1902. The first mass was celebrated in 1903. As the Catholic presence grew, the cornerstone of a larger masonry building