It is a suffragan diocese in the ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Santiago de Guatemala.

Its Marian cathedral is Catedral Nuestra Señora de la Expectación in the episcopal see of Jalapa.

The diocesan patron is Santa Cruz (the Holy Cross).

It was erected on 10 March 1951, on territory split off from the Archdiocese of Guatemala, which remains its metropolitan.

On 25 January 2016 it lost territory to erect the Diocese of San Francisco de Asís de Jutiapa as fellow suffragan of the Archdiocese of Guatemala.