By Dr. Jeff Mirus, Catholic Culture - I was told that the priests of the Diocese of Richmond were given the opportunity to choose whether they wished to be assigned to Bishop Welsh in the new diocese, or wished to remain in the now-restricted Richmond territory... The result was that, because of Bishop Welsh’s superior reputation for orthodoxy and commitment to honest Catholic education and evangelization, a great many of the priests who really cared about precisely these values chose to align themselves with the new diocese.