After a standstill during the long illness of Pope Francis this Lent, metropolitan episcopal appointments in the U.S. have begun to pick up again, with new archbishops being appointed in Omaha and Kansas City in the last two weeks.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York. Image credit: Free Exercise: America’s Story of Religious Liberty, via YouTube.
But even after a string of metropolitan appointments in recent months, there remain four metropolitan archbishops in the U.S. serving past 75 years old, along with four more archbishops due to reach the customary retirement age before the year’s end.
Some — most especially Chicago’s Cardinal Blase Cupich — are likely to remain in post until they are closer to 80 than 75.
But others have not been shy in ecclesiastical circles about their readiness for retirement. The most prominent American archbishop said to be ready for a change of pace? Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York.
When Dolan will retire — and who might replace him — has been a matter of speculation among clerics in the region for years.
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The prevailing wisdom in New York is that whenever he retires, Dolan seems unlikely to go before the archdiocese has resolved the complex litigation its facing over hundreds of sexual abuse claims the archdiocese has faced in recent years, after a pair of state laws in 2019 and 2022 opened a window in the state statute of limitations.
There were nearly 2,000 cases of alleged abuse, with some claims dating back as far as the 1930s, and with alleged perpetrators including clerics and religious, and lay people, and then a cadre of lay people affiliated to varying degree with the archdiocese — foster parents, teachers, janitors, coaches, and parish volunteers among them.
The suits came after the Church’s collective reckoning over clerical abuse that began with the 2018 revelations of abuse against one-time New York auxiliary bishop Theodore McCarrick, who later gained and lost a cardinalate over the scandal of abusive conduct.
In all, the suits against the archdiocese have been estimated at nearly $900 million in alleged damages.
In October, Dolan said that more than 500 of the cases had been settled — reportedly for more than $76 million.
But some 1,400 cases have been held up by competing lawsuits between the New York archdiocese and Chubb, an insurance company which has accused the archdiocese of covering up child sexual abuse, and concealing its knowledge of abusive actors in order to shift responsibility to its insurer.
The archdiocese, meanwhile, claims that the insurer is attempting to evade its obligations “to settle covered claims which would bring peace and healing to victim-survivors.”
Litigation has spanned years, and as it continues, the archdiocese has made serious staffing cuts and sold its Manhattan headquarters to a real estate developer for more $100 million. Attorneys for alleged victims, meanwhile, say the archdiocese has not moved quickly enough to provide justice for people harmed by the archdiocese.
All of that, in short, is complicated, and resolving it a multi-step process: The archdiocese would need first to resolve its dispute with Chubb, and then aim to settle the pending litigation with alleged victims, either in court, or in a negotiated settlement, or through its Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program.
And according to sources close to the archdiocese, Dolan is reluctant to leave much of the work to his successor — the cardinal reportedly hopes to see at least the Chubb litigation resolved before his retirement.
While that could change, if Dolan does remain in office until the dueling insurance suits are closed, it will likely be months before a resolution — though the archdiocese is not likely eager to see litigation linger longer than it has to, as it faces pressure from victims’ advocates to bring them healing and closure.
But whenever Dolan retires the major question is about who will replace him.
And that likely depends on who exercises most influence over the process.
Of the seven metropolitan archbishops appointed in recent months, two were Chicago auxiliary bishops, and another who was a Chicago priest who made it a point to thank Cardinal Cupich when he was appointed in late March to lead the Archdiocese of Omaha.
Other appointments, most notably that of Cardinal Robert McElroy to Washington, DC, have gone to bishops well-known to be Cupich collaborators, in moves reported by The Pillar to have been influenced directly by him.
Those appointments suggest a reality The Pillar has long reported: that Cupich, a member of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Bishops, has become the point man for American metropolitan appointments.
In recent months, according to sources in Rome and the U.S., that reality has become a point of escalating tension between Cupich’s office and that of Cardinal Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio, whose official mandate includes responsibility for coordinating the identification of candidates and stateside selection process ahead of the Dicastery for Bishops, and ultimately, the pontiff.
If Cupich is influential in the eventual New York appointment, it’s hard to say who he might want to see appointed to the job.
In some Church circles, there has long been speculation that the other American member of the Dicastery for Bishops, Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, might be eventually tapped to “cross the river” and become New York’s archbishop.
Conventional wisdom has argued that cardinals are rarely moved from one see to another, but there are two notable U.S. cases which suggest that the conventional take may no longer hold.
First, McElroy’s recent appointment came well after he had been named to the College of Cardinals. Second, Tobin himself was in 2016 made a cardinal as Archbishop of Indianapolis, 29 days before he was named the Archbishop of Newark.
But if Tobin’s status as a cardinal doesn’t make him an unlikely candidate, his age might. The cardinal will turn 73 years old, giving him only two years until the customary retirement age for bishops. While cardinals often stay on in office beyond the age of 75, the monumental needs of the New York archdiocese suggest a younger man is more likely for the position.
There are other possible candidates for the job who could gain the support of either Pierre or Cupich. One such prelate is Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Texas, whose profile among American prelates has risen in recent years, especially for his work on the border and his leadership on the pope’s own signature project, the synod on synodality.
At the same time, Flores was a visible part of the Church’s Eucharistic Revival initiative, serving as a board member of the nonprofit overseeing the Eucharistic Congress, and helping to launch from his diocese one route of the Eucharistic pilgrimages traversing the country last summer.
In the city, the bishop’s familiarity with the border — and his Spanish-language fluency — could be an asset worth noting. More than 20% of New Yorkers speak Spanish at home, and in one borough of the New York archdiocese, the Bronx, that rises to almost 50% of residents.
Because of the wide scope of his involvement in ecclesiastical affairs, and the widely-perceived independence of his thinking, the bishop has been frequently discussed as a likely candidate for a metropolitan see, and has been discussed in some circles as a candidate for New York.
Another possible candidate is Indianapolis’ Archbishop Thompson, 64, an accountant with a canon law degree, pastoral experience, and 14 years experience as a diocesan bishop — including a high profile role last year as host of the National Eucharistic Congress.
A moderate when it comes to conference politics, Thompson has navigated complicated issues, seeing a religious liberty fight, with a heavy dose of Vatican involvement, come to his front door after he directed in 2017 three Catholic high schools not to renew the contracts of teachers who had entered same-sex marriages. One of those schools, Brebeuf Jesuit, appealed his decision, in a public dispute which has not yet been officially resolved.
But through all of that, Thompson has seemed to navigate a careful tightrope, without attracting the kind of profile which might put him out of favor in Rome, while holding the line in his diocese in key issues.
If Dolan has significant influence on the process, there are at least two other possibilities worth watching.
The first is Bishop James Checchio of Metuchen, who at 58 is regarded as energetic and administratively competent, orthodox and attentive to governance, and attentive to priestly formation. Like Dolan, Checchio was rector of the North American College, and the prelate has been in the past praised by Dolan.
The second is a figure perhaps less publicly known, but with a wide swath of friends in the life of the Church: the bishop of Beaumont, Texas, David Toups, 54, who is regarded highly for his intellectual and pastoral prowess in the Church, and has a long relationship with Dolan — Toups was a seminarian at the North American College while Dolan himself was rector there,
Bishop of a small East Texas diocese, Toups is also a trustee of the Catholic University of America, and has been a seminary rector and a USCCB official, While Toups is relatively young, episcopally speaking, Dolan himself was not yet 60 when he became New York’s archbishop, setting him up for a long tenure.
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If you ask most historians of the city, they’ll tell you that the quintessential New Yorker was the late Mayor Ed Koch — “Hizzoner,” as he was known to both friends and foes. The Bronx-born Koch embodied an era in New York and a culture — he was brash, plain-spoken, pragmatic, often-controversial, and tough.
If Koch was the quintessential New Yorker, Dolan — a midwestern guy who took to the city and her people — might be among the Big Apple’s quintessential transplants.
As “HizzEminence” — to borrow a phrase — prepares to eventually step back from leadership at St. Patrick’s, the appointment of a new archbishop will reveal something about the current state of the Church in the U.S. and Rome, and a great deal more about the future of the Church in the city that never sleeps.
