Vatican City (AFP) – Pope Leo XIV has accepted the resignation of New York’s conservative Archbishop Timothy Dolan and named a little-known, pro-migrant bishop from his native Chicago to replace him, the Vatican said Thursday. In a significant shift for the Catholic Church in the United States, Leo replaced Dolan, who stepped down after reaching the Church’s retirement age of 75, with Ronald Hicks, a 58-year-old bishop from Illinois.
The New York archdiocese is among the largest in the US and the pick ends months of speculation about who would follow Dolan, widely regarded as being close to US President Donald Trump. This is the most important bishop appointment Leo has made since his election to head up the world’s Catholics in May and signals a desire to take a firmer stance on the US administration’s decisions, particularly on human rights. Hicks shares several similarities with Leo including solidarity with migrants, in contrast with Trump’s deportation drive.
In November, he endorsed a rare statement from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops which heavily criticised the administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policies. He said the statement “affirms our solidarity with all our brothers and sisters as it expresses our concerns, opposition, and hopes with clarity and conviction.” It is grounded in the Church’s enduring commitment to the Catholic social teaching of human dignity and a call for meaningful immigration reform,” he said.
– ‘Great affinity’ –
In an interview with Vatican News published just after his appointment Thursday, the new Archbishop said he had “a great affinity for (Pope Leo) and a lot of respect.” Hicks spent five years of ministry in El Salvador in Central America, heading a church-run orphanage programme that operated across nine Latin American and Caribbean countries. Leo spent two decades in service in Peru.
The outgoing bishop of Joliet, Illinois, also served in several parishes in the Archdiocese of Chicago, the city where Leo was born — though the pair only met for the first time in 2024. “I grew up in the suburb right next door to Pope Leo, about 14 blocks away from each other,” he said. “And like Pope Leo, I’m looking for a Church” that acts “not in a divisive way or tearing people apart, but looking for ways of unity and finding ways to cooperate with each other.”
Dolan, a ruddy-faced extrovert with Irish-American roots, has served in New York since 2009. A theological conservative fiercely opposed to abortion, Dolan sparked controversy in September by comparing the conservative political activist Charlie Kirk to a “modern-day Saint Paul.”
– Abuse challenge –
Dolan oversaw the fallout from a major sexual abuse scandal in the diocese. Just a couple of weeks ago, the archdiocese announced the creation of a $300 million fund to compensate victims of sexual abuse who had filed complaints against the Church. At the time, Dolan said that a “series of very difficult financial decisions” were made, including layoffs within the archdiocese and a 10-percent reduction of its operating budget.
Hicks is no stranger to managing the fallout of the abuse scandal. The Joliet diocese he now leaves was criticised under his predecessors for its handling of paedophile priests. The scandal was “something that is never going to be behind us,” Hicks told Vatican News. “This is a sin in the Church, and it’s such a great magnitude that we can’t just pretend, ‘Well, it’s behind us and now we simply move on.’ What this fund, hopefully, is going to do is help bring some healing for some survivors.”
© 2024 AFP
