VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter
Joshua J. McElwee | Mar. 24, 2016
VATICAN CITY
Pope Francis has appointed a new leader for a Catholic archdiocese in the American Midwest where mismanagement of clergy sexual abuse cases led to the dual early resignations of the former archbishop and an auxiliary bishop last June.
Archbishop Bernard Hebda will now lead the archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis in Minnesota, canceling his former appointment to take over the archdiocese of Newark, N.J., in July.
Hebda, a Pennsylvania native, had been serving as the apostolic administrator of the Minnesota archdiocese since Archbishop John Nienstedt’s resignation in June 2015.
Nienstedt resigned alongside Auxiliary Bishop Lee Piché ten days after prosecutors in his archdiocese brought criminal charges against the archdiocese “for its failure to protect children.”
Hebda’s new appointment comes as a bit of a surprise. He had previously been appointed as the coadjutor archbishop in Newark, meaning he would have automatically replaced current Newark Archbishop John Myers as head of the archdiocese at his retirement, expected to come when he turns 75 in July.
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