**New York (AFP)** – The newly named pro-migrant archbishop of New York called himself an “unworthy servant” during his first Mass in the city after Pope Leo XIV named his fellow Chicago native to replace a conservative cardinal Thursday. In a significant shift for the US Catholic Church, Leo replaced Timothy Dolan, who stepped down after reaching the church’s retirement age of 75, with Ronald Hicks, a 58-year-old bishop from Illinois.
“I’ve always loved the energy of New York,” Hicks said at a Mass for the staff of the New York archdiocese in Manhattan’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which he also addressed in Spanish. He will be formally installed February 6. The New York archdiocese is among the largest in the United States, and the pick ends months of speculation about who would follow Dolan, widely regarded as being close to President Donald Trump.
Hicks’s appointment is the most consequential Leo has made since his election to head up the world’s Catholics in May and signals a desire to push back firmly on the US administration’s policies. Hicks shares several similarities with Leo, including outspoken solidarity with migrants at a time when Trump is ordering mass deportations and portraying migrants and refugees as criminals.
“Thanks to all of you…and thanks to God,” Hicks said in Spanish. More than 36 percent of New Yorkers are foreign-born, and 1.8 million speak Spanish at home, per official data. In November, the pope endorsed a rare statement from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, which heavily criticized the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policies toward undocumented migrants.
Hicks 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.
Dolan walked Hicks around the imposing cathedral with one hand on his shoulder, the other on his ceremonial crozier staff, telling congregants “we got a good one.” “He will do a very good job, and because he is young, he will stay a long time,” Margie Javier, an 82-year-old volunteer in the New York archdiocese, told AFP.
Hicks earlier quipped at a media briefing that he has the necessary diplomatic skills to manage the culinary and sporting rivalry between his native Chicago and New York City. “Potentially my first controversial statement: I’m a Cubs fan and I love deep-dish pizza,” he said. “However, I am going to start rooting for the New York sports teams, and I already love your pizza.”
Hicks said his childhood home was just 14 blocks from Pope Leo’s. “In my 31 years of priesthood, I was formed in Chicago,” he said.
– **’Great affinity’** – Hicks spent five years of ministry in El Salvador in Central America, heading a church-run orphanage program 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. 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 slain conservative political activist and Trump supporter Charlie Kirk to a “modern-day Saint Paul.”
At Thursday’s Mass, an annual event for the staff of the archdiocese, Dolan heaped praise on his successor.
– **Abuse challenge** – Dolan oversaw the fallout from a major sexual abuse scandal in the diocese. Just 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 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 criticized under his predecessors for its handling of pedophile priests. The scandal was “something that is never going to be behind us,” Hicks told Vatican News.
© 2024 AFP
