The Diocese of St. Augustine is a Latin Church ecclesiastical territory of the Catholic Church, located in the U.S. state of Florida. It is a suffragan diocese in the Ecclesiastical Province of Miami, covering much of North Florida, including the cities of St. Augustine, Jacksonville, and Gainesville. The bishop's seat is the Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine; the current bishop is Erik T. Pohlmeier. St. Augustine is the oldest continuously inhabited European-established settlement in the continental United States. The city was part of other dioceses until March 11, 1870, when the Diocese of St. Augustine was created. It covered most of the Florida peninsula until the 1950s, when Florida's expanding population necessitated the creation of new dioceses. History Background The history of the diocese dates to the beginnings of European settlement in North America, when Pedro Menéndez de Avilés secured Spanish supremacy in Florida by defeating the French and planting a permanent colony, Nombre de Dios Mission, in 1565 to evangelize the Indians. He had been accompanied by four priests, and there they celebrated the first Mass in what would become the United States. Martin Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales became first the parish priest of St. Augustine, the first established parish in the United States. Pending the arrival of regular missionaries, Menéndez appointed soldiers he deemed qualified to give religious instructions to the Indians. St. Augustine began its existence as a regularly constituted parish of the Diocese of Santiago de Cuba. Its church records, dating from 1594, are preserved in the archives of the present cathedral. In 1793, Pius VI established the Diocese of Louisiana and the Floridas, appointing the Right Rev. Luis Peñalver y Cardenas, with residence at New Orleans, as first bishop. After Bishop Peñalver's promotion to the Archbishopric of Guatemala in 1801, no successor having been appointed, Louisiana, which was annexed to the United States in 1803, came under the jurisdiction of Bishop John Carroll of Baltimore in 1806, the bishops of Havana reassuming authority over Florida until the appointment of Fr Michael Portier in 1825 to the new Vicariate of Alabama and Florida. Bishop Portier undertook single-handed the work of his vast vicariate, not having a single priest, until at his request, Bishop John England of Charleston sent Father Edward Mayne to St. Augustine in 1828. Formation of diocese In 1850, the Diocese of Savannah was created and included that part of Florida which lies