Pope names fellow Chicagoan, Bishop Ronald Hicks, as new archbishop of New York

Pope Leo XIV on Thurs­day made his most im­por­tant U.S. ap­point­ment to date, nam­ing a fel­low Chicagoan as the next arch­bish­op of New York to lead one of the biggest U.S. arch­dio­ce­ses as it nav­i­gates re­la­tions with the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion and its im­mi­gra­tion crack­down.

Bish­op Ronald Hicks, the cur­rent bish­op of Joli­et, Illi­nois, re­places the re­tir­ing Car­di­nal Tim­o­thy Dolan, a promi­nent con­ser­v­a­tive fig­ure in the U.S. Catholic hi­er­ar­chy. Hicks takes over af­ter Dolan last week fi­nal­ized a plan to es­tab­lish a $300 mil­lion fund to com­pen­sate vic­tims of sex­u­al abuse who had sued the arch­dio­cese.

Hicks ad­dressed the mat­ter dur­ing his news con­fer­ence Thurs­day.

“As a church, we can nev­er rest in our ef­forts to pre­vent abuse, to pro­tect chil­dren and to care for sur­vivors,” he said. “While this work is chal­leng­ing, it’s dif­fi­cult, it’s painful, I hope it will con­tin­ue to help in the ar­eas of ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy and heal­ing.”

Dolan had sub­mit­ted his res­ig­na­tion in Feb­ru­ary, as re­quired when he turned 75. But the Vat­i­can of­ten waits to make im­por­tant lead­er­ship changes in dio­ce­ses if there is lin­ger­ing abuse lit­i­ga­tion or oth­er gov­er­nance mat­ters that need to be re­solved by the out­go­ing bish­op.

The han­dover, though, rep­re­sents a sig­nif­i­cant new chap­ter for the U.S. Catholic Church, which is forg­ing a new era with the Chica­go-born Leo as the first Amer­i­can pope. Leo and the U.S. hi­er­ar­chy have al­ready shown will­ing­ness to chal­lenge the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion on im­mi­gra­tion and oth­er is­sues, and Hicks is seen as very much a Leo-style bish­op.

“I ac­cept this ap­point­ment with hu­mil­i­ty and an open heart,” Hicks said. “I ask for your sup­port and your prayers, and I ask God to sup­port us as al­ways.”

As he re­ferred to Hicks as “an ear­ly Christ­mas gift for the Arch­dio­cese,” Dolan said he didn’t know Hicks be­fore he was cho­sen as his suc­ces­sor. “The last week, since I found out, I’ve got­ten to know him, and I al­ready love him and ap­pre­ci­ate him and trust him.”

A call for sol­i­dar­i­ty with im­mi­grants

Hicks, 58, grew up in South Hol­land, Illi­nois, a short dis­tance from the sub­ur­ban Chica­go child­hood home of Leo, the for­mer Robert Pre­vost.

Like Pre­vost, who spent 20 years as a mis­sion­ary in Pe­ru, Hicks worked for five years in El Sal­vador head­ing a church-run or­phan­age pro­gram that op­er­at­ed in nine Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean coun­tries. Hicks said he was ex­cit­ed about get­ting to know the New York area and the peo­ple who live there but jok­ing­ly not­ed he need­ed to make a con­tro­ver­sial state­ment that “I’m a Cubs fan and I love deep dish piz­za,” an homage to his Chica­go roots.

“Tak­ing a new po­si­tion as arch­bish­op of New York is an enor­mous re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, but I can hon­est­ly say that Bish­op Hicks is up to the task,” said the Rev. Eu­se­bius Mar­tis, who has known Hicks since the mid-1980s and worked with him at Mundelein Sem­i­nary, the Chica­go arch­dioce­san sem­i­nary.

He said New York was lucky to have him.

“He is a won­der­ful man, al­ways thought­ful and at­ten­tive to the needs of sem­i­nar­i­ans,” Mar­tis, pro­fes­sor of sacra­men­tal the­ol­o­gy at the Pon­tif­i­cal Litur­gi­cal In­sti­tute of Sant’Ansel­mo, the Bene­dic­tine Uni­ver­si­ty in Rome, said in an email.

In No­vem­ber, Hicks en­dorsed a spe­cial mes­sage from the U.S. Con­fer­ence of Catholic Bish­ops con­demn­ing the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s im­mi­gra­tion raids, which have tar­get­ed Chica­go in par­tic­u­lar.

In a state­ment then urg­ing Catholics to share the mes­sage, Hicks said it “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.”

A sim­i­lar home­town

Though they both hail from Chica­go, Hicks on­ly met the fu­ture pope in 2024, when then-Car­di­nal Pre­vost vis­it­ed one of Hicks’ parish­es and took part in a ques­tion-and-an­swer con­ver­sa­tion for the pub­lic.

Hicks, who sat in the front pew, said he learned that day what sort of fu­ture pope Leo would be and said he liked what he saw both in his pub­lic re­marks and then in their pri­vate con­ver­sa­tion. “Five min­utes turned in­to 10 min­utes, and the 10 min­utes turned in­to 15 and the 15 turned in­to 20,” Hicks told lo­cal Chica­go WGN-TV news af­ter Leo’s May elec­tion.

He said he rec­og­nized their shared back­grounds and pri­or­i­ties to build bridges. “We grew up lit­er­al­ly in the same ra­dius, in the same neigh­bour­hood to­geth­er. We played in the same parks, went swim­ming in the same pools, like the same piz­za places.”

Hicks served as a parish priest in Chica­go and dean of train­ing at Mundelein Sem­i­nary be­fore Chica­go Car­di­nal Blase Cu­pich made him vic­ar gen­er­al of the arch­dio­cese in 2015. Three years lat­er, Hicks was made an aux­il­iary bish­op, and in 2020 Pope Fran­cis named him bish­op of Joli­et, serv­ing around 520,000 Catholics in sev­en coun­ties.

Cu­pich, seen as a pro­gres­sive in the U.S. church, has been a close ad­vis­er to both Fran­cis and Leo, and Hicks’ ap­point­ment to such a promi­nent job like­ly could not have come with­out Cu­pich’s en­dorse­ment.

A pas­tor for New York

The New York arch­dio­cese is among the largest in the na­tion, serv­ing rough­ly 2.5 mil­lion Catholics in Man­hat­tan, the Bronx and Stat­en Is­land in New York City, as well as sev­en coun­ties to the north.

The gre­gar­i­ous Dolan is one of the most high-pro­file Catholic lead­ers in the Unit­ed States and a promi­nent voice in the city.

Dolan is wide­ly viewed as con­ser­v­a­tive, writ­ing a 2018 Wall Street Jour­nal col­umn head­lined “The De­moc­rats Aban­don Catholics.” Yet in 2023, he al­so wrote a let­ter of wel­come to a con­fer­ence at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty cel­e­brat­ing out­reach pro­grams aimed at LGBTQ+ Catholics, and he wel­comed LGBTQ+ par­tic­i­pa­tion in the city’s an­nu­al St. Patrick’s Day pa­rade.

Dolan has ties to the cur­rent Re­pub­li­can ad­min­is­tra­tion. As arch­bish­op of New York, Dolan host­ed the an­nu­al Al Smith white-tie din­ner that rais­es mil­lions of dol­lars for Catholic char­i­ties. It has tra­di­tion­al­ly of­fered can­di­dates from both par­ties the chance to trade light-heart­ed barbs ahead of Elec­tion Day, though in 2024 on­ly Don­ald Trump par­tic­i­pat­ed since De­mo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee Ka­mala Har­ris de­clined the in­vi­ta­tion.

Trump, who has long-stand­ing con­nec­tions to his na­tive New York City, lat­er had the car­di­nal pray at his in­au­gu­ra­tion and ap­point­ed Dolan to his new Re­li­gious Lib­er­ty Com­mis­sion.

Dolan was Trump’s pick to suc­ceed Pope Fran­cis, though Dolan did crit­i­cize the pres­i­dent for shar­ing an AI-gen­er­at­ed im­age of Trump, who is not a Catholic, dressed up as a pope be­fore the May con­clave that ul­ti­mate­ly elect­ed Leo.

Dolan was named arch­bish­op of New York by Pope Bene­dict XVI in Feb­ru­ary 2009 af­ter serv­ing as arch­bish­op of Mil­wau­kee. He was made car­di­nal in 2012 and head­ed the U.S. bish­ops con­fer­ence from 2010-2013.

A first task to over­see abuse set­tle­ments

In one of his biggest first tasks, Hicks will have to over­see the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the abuse set­tle­ment fund that Dolan fi­nal­ized, which is to be paid for by re­duc­ing the arch­dioce­san bud­get and sell­ing off as­sets. The aim is to cov­er set­tle­ments for most, if not all of the rough­ly 1,300 out­stand­ing abuse claims against the arch­dio­cese.

Hicks is no stranger to man­ag­ing the fall­out of the abuse scan­dal, af­ter the Joli­et dio­cese un­der his pre­de­ces­sors and the rest of the Illi­nois church came un­der scathing crit­i­cism by the state’s at­tor­ney gen­er­al in 2023.

A five-year in­ves­ti­ga­tion found that 451 Catholic cler­gy abused 1,997 chil­dren in Illi­nois be­tween 1950 and 2019. Hicks had been ap­point­ed to lead the Joli­et church in 2020. The at­tor­ney gen­er­al’s re­port was gen­er­al­ly pos­i­tive in rec­og­niz­ing the dio­cese’s cur­rent child pro­tec­tion poli­cies but doc­u­ment­ed sev­er­al cas­es where pre­vi­ous Joli­et bish­ops moved known abusers around, dis­par­aged vic­tims and re­fused to ac­cept re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their role in en­abling the abuse. —VAT­I­CAN CITY (AP)

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Sto­ry by NICOLE WIN­FIELD | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press re­li­gion cov­er­age re­ceives sup­port through the AP’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with The Con­ver­sa­tion US, with fund­ing from Lil­ly En­dow­ment Inc. The AP is sole­ly re­spon­si­ble for this con­tent.