The Diocese of Nashville () is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory or diocese of the Catholic Church that encompasses 38 counties spread over 16,302 square miles of Middle Tennessee. The Catholic population of the diocese is estimated at approximately 76,000 individuals registered in parishes, which represents about 3.4% of the overall population in Middle Tennessee. , Mass was offered in Spanish, Vietnamese, Latin, and Korean. The diocese has 75 priests and 70 permanent deacons serving 59 churches. There are 24 seminarians currently studying for the priesthood. The Cathedral Church of the Incarnation, located on West End Avenue in Nashville, close to the Vanderbilt University campus is the present seat of the Bishop of Nashville. The majority of the membership lives in Nashville and surrounding suburbs. However, some parishes outside that area have seen considerable growth in recent times due to the influx of Hispanic immigrants settling in some smaller communities; sometimes, so the Spanish-speaking members outnumber English-speaking communicants in such churches. Services are often said in English by one priest and then in Spanish by a second priest. It is common to have three or more services each weekend. The Diocese of Nashville is a suffragan diocese in the ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Louisville. History Pope Gregory XVI erected the Diocese of Nashville on 28 July 1837, taking the territory of the present state of Tennessee from the Diocese of Bardstown and making it a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Baltimore. Holy Rosary Cathedral, located where the Tennessee State Capitol now stands, became the first cathedral of the diocese. Bishop Richard Pius Miles, the first Bishop of Nashville, built the Church of Saint Mary of the Seven Sorrows, located downtown near the state capital, as the second cathedral of the diocese. It became a parish church when the present cathedral opened in 1914. On 9 December 1937, Pope Pius XI transferred the diocese to the new Metropolitan Province of Louisville. On 20 June 1970, Pope Paul VI created the new Diocese of Memphis, taking the counties of Tennessee west of the Tennessee River from the diocese. On 27 May 1988, Pope John Paul II created the Diocese of Knoxville, taking the eastern counties of Tennessee from the diocese and thus establishing its present territory. A study released in 2014 by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) at Georgetown University cited the Diocese of Nashville