US needs around 34 new bishops by 2025

Thursday, March 23rd, 2023

If Pope Francis continues to serve as bishop of Rome for another two years, he may have a notable opportunity to refashion the U.S. Catholic hierarchy.

Dozens of bishops, several in historically significant archdioceses, will be required by canon law to submit resignation letters upon turning 75.

At least 13 archdioceses and 21 dioceses could have new episcopal appointments by February 2025.

In addition, two dioceses — Fairbanks, Alaska, and Houma-Thibodaux, Louisiana — operate without bishops.

The number of episcopal openings could increase because of deaths or resignations.

If he names new bishops to all those local churches, Francis will have appointed 64 percent of the U.S. episcopate since becoming pope in March 2013.

Forty-six percent of current U.S. bishops are Francis appointees, said Catherine Hoegeman, a Missouri State University sociology professor who tracks U.S. episcopal appointments.

“Over the next two years, it looks like Francis is going from [having appointed] a little less than half of active bishops to a little less than two-thirds. I think that’s a notable shift,” said Hoegeman.

Since 1969, she said, popes have made an average of 15 episcopal appointments every year in the United States.

She also told NCR that the likely openings in the next two years represent an unusually high potential turnover among archbishops.

“Out of 34 total retirements in the next couple of years, a third of them are going to be in the archdioceses. That seems to be a little skewed with a higher percentage of archdiocesan retirements,” Hoegeman said.

By February 2025, the archbishops of New York, Hartford, Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, Kansas City, Milwaukee, Omaha, Houston, Mobile and New Orleans will have turned 75.

Cardinal Wilton Gregory of Washington turned 75 in December 2022.

Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston turns 79, four years beyond the traditional retirement age, in June.

Meanwhile, seven sitting bishops have already turned 75 and another 14 will hit the retirement age over the next two years in dioceses across the country — from Honolulu and Kalamazoo, Michigan, to Palm Beach, Florida and Portland, Maine.

Although Catholic bishops must send resignation letters to the pope upon reaching age 75, Francis can decide to let a bishop remain in position up to age 80.

Whether all the potential new bishop appointments translate into a U.S. Catholic hierarchy that more closely reflects Francis’ priorities is unknown.

The “talent pool”

of potential bishops

was primarily formed

in the pontificates of John Paul II

and Benedict XVI,

both of whom inspired

conservative-leaning men

to enter seminaries

with visions of fighting

“the culture of death” and the

“dictatorship of relativism.”

Church historians and other scholars told NCR that the “talent pool” of potential bishops was primarily formed in the pontificates of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, both of whom inspired conservative-leaning men to enter seminaries with visions of fighting “the culture of death” and the “dictatorship of relativism.”

“To have great bishops, you need great seminaries.

“You need vibrant engagement with the intellectual life of the church, and I just don’t see that happening,” said Natalia Imperatori-Lee, chair of religious studies at Manhattan College in the Bronx, New York.

Imperatori-Lee told NCR that she believes the pope will have a difficult time finding enough “Francis-type bishops” in the United States to change the church’s path from an institution engaged in the culture wars to one that more faithfully models Francis’ “culture of encounter.”

“I am hopeful the men who Francis appoints will be in the style that he has done, men who are pastors first, and bureaucrats second, who are not careerist climbers,” she said.

“But I don’t know that the pool of potential bishops and cardinals is of the caliber where we would really get revolutionary change in the U.S. hierarchy.”

No ‘perfect’ bishop candidates

In an interview with NCR, retired Cardinal Justin Rigali, who as a former member of the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops helped advise the pope on which priests to select as bishops, described the process by which those candidates are identified and chosen.

In the United States, Rigali said that every few years bishops in different regions of the country meet to discuss potential bishop candidates, and send their names to the Vatican’s nunciature, or embassy, in the U.S.

From there, the ambassador, known as an apostolic nuncio, seeks information from priests, deacons and lay people who know the candidates.

He said when he served at the Congregation for Bishops — now the Dicastery for Bishops — the office would present the pope with a list of three names for a diocese, sometimes with the congregation’s recommendation for a particular candidate.

Rigali, a former archbishop of St Louis and Philadelphia, said no candidates are “perfect in every category,” but that they reflect the sitting pope’s priorities for a bishop.

“There’s definitely a common thread; the life of the church in a particular time, and what is deemed appropriate and necessary in the choice of a pastor,” Rigali said.

“Like anything else, there are going to be some differences of opinion, but we go by what the church teaches and what the Second Vatican Council says about bishops.”

On many other

(of Francis’) appointments,

the record is mixed

because there was

the expectation or promise

they were

going to be Francis-like bishops.

Instead, they are vaguely good pastors

but not something

you would necessarily see

as an episcopate that’s shaped

by Francis’ pontificate.”