MINNESOTA
The Catholic Spirit
Maria Wiering | March 24, 2016
Auxiliary Bishop Cozzens calls appointment ‘an early Easter’
“Brilliant.” “Humble.” “Holy.” The words were used repeatedly by leaders in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis to describe Archbishop Bernard Hebda, whom Pope Francis named their archbishop March 24.
Father Charles Lachowitzer, the archdiocese’s moderator of the curia, said the news brought him “great joy.”
“As we were going around doing the listening sessions a few months ago, the archbishop’s relationship with the people and his graciousness, his kindness, his humility, his faith, all of these things were immediately responded to by many of the people, saying ‘Can we keep you here?’” he said. “From those first listening sessions it was obvious that if he were selected by the Holy Father to be our next archbishop, we couldn’t have done any better.”
Since June 2015, Archbishop-designate Hebda has been serving as the archdiocese’s apostolic administrator, a position he assumed was temporary, as he was previously named coadjutor archbishop of Newark and expecting to lead that archdiocese upon the retirement of Archbishop John Myers.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.