The Vatican announced a bunch of new bishop appointments for the US, although the Boston Globe only seems to have noticed one. Bishop Timothy McDonnell, an auxiliary in New York, was named to the Springfield, Mass., diocese, where the bishop just resigned after being accused of abuse. Bishop Robert McManus, auxiliary in Providence, RI, was named to succeed Bishop Daniel Reilly of Worcester, Mass., who’s retiring. Msgr. Robert Cunningham, a priest in Buffalo, has been named to Ogdensburg, NY, which has been vacant since last summer, when the bishop was sent to Palm Beach, Fla. And Msgr. Robert Finn of St. Louis will become co-adjutor bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo.
I think it’s interesting that neither of the two Masachusetts bishops were auxiliaries from Boston. In the past, at least one would almost certainly have been filled from Boston. How things have changed.
On top of all that, not to be missed in the flurry of activity, Mary Ann Glendon, the Harvard Law professor and the Pope’s go-to-gal for representing him at Vatican conferences, has been named to head the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, a very prestigious honor and I think the first woman to be so named. Speaking of first women, the Vatican announced over the weekend the appointment of the first two women to become members of the International Theological Commission.
Update: Mark Sullivan comments at Tom Fitzpatrick’s blog that Bishop McManus has celebrated the Tridentine Mass as a bishop.
