(RNS) — In a surprise announcement, Pope Francis has appointed Bishop Richard G. Henning of the Diocese of Providence as archbishop-elect of Boston. Henning, who has only been a bishop since 2018, will replace 80-year-old retiring Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley, who has served as one of Francis’ closest advisers since the beginning of his papacy.
Asking for prayers at a press conference after the announcement Monday (Aug. 5), Henning said, “I am not worthy of this call. I was deeply shocked and surprised by this call, but I know the goodness of God suffices in all things. I will trust in him.”
“I’m humbled by the size and the history of this archdiocese, and I am very well aware that I have a lot to learn,” said Henning, who emphasized that he would lean on O’Malley as a “tutor.”
Henning, who has led the Diocese of Providence, Rhode Island, and its some 600,000 Catholics for just over a year, will now lead an archdiocese of more than 1.8 million Catholics in a region of the country where Catholicism, though declining, still remains a dominant religion. Before his appointment to Providence, Henning was an auxiliary bishop in the Diocese of Rockville Centre, New York.
At the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Henning has served on the Committee on Doctrine and the Subcommittee on the Church in Latin America.
Introducing Henning, O’Malley emphasized his “heart of a pastor,” fluency in Spanish and extensive academic credentials. “The arrival of a new archbishop is always a time of renewal and hope,” O’Malley said.
San Jose, California, Bishop Oscar Cantú, who has served with Henning on the Subcommittee on the Church in Latin America, told Religion News Service in an email that he was “happy” for the Archdiocese of Boston because they will have a “loving, compassionate shepherd.”
Bishop Richard G. Henning. Courtesy photo
Cantú said he had gotten to know Henning while both were studying in Rome. “I found him to be kind and pleasant, always listening before speaking,” wrote Cantú.
On the subcommittee, Henning “was always measured and thoughtful in his comments,” Cantú said, as well as “friendly, personal, and genuine.”
Echoing Francis’ famous words in an interview after he was elected as pope, Henning told reporters, “The first thing is simply to say that I am a sinner in need of grace and that I place my faith, my trust, my hope in the Lord Jesus who is bread for the world and the king of love.”
Henning recounted an ad limina visit when New York bishops met with Francis and the pope urged the bishops to practice closeness to the Lord, their people and other bishops. Henning said he told Francis that closeness to the pope should be added.
“On this day in particular, I feel very close to the Holy Father and again grateful for his shepherding of the universal church,” Henning told reporters.
In an interview with a Providence TV station, Henning emphasized that while he was grateful for the pope’s trust and dedicated to obedience, he had “mixed feelings” about leaving Rhode Island.
“I have loved Rhode Island so much, and so even as I will certainly throw myself into this new mission, I will always feel Rhode Island here,” said Henning, pointing at his heart.
Given his short time in Providence, Henning said at the press conference that he had felt “safe” and that when the apostolic nuncio called him, he thought it was about another matter and he answered the call “innocently.”
Henning’s appointment comes five years after O’Malley’s 75th birthday, the age when bishops are required to submit a retirement letter to the pope, who can choose to wait longer to accept it.
Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston and seven other bishops celebrate Mass on the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona to commemorate the deaths of migrants in the desert and to pray for immigration reform on April 1, 2014.
O’Malley became archbishop of Boston in 2003 as the archdiocese was still reeling from the Boston Globe’s revelations of extensive clergy sex abuse and coverups.
The Capuchin priest had served in Hispanic ministry in the Archdiocese of Washington before becoming coadjutor bishop of the Diocese of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands in 1984, then Bishop of Fall River, Massachusetts, in 1992, and then bishop of Palm Beach, Florida, in 2002.
After becoming archbishop, O’Malley was elevated to cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI in 2006, and he went on to become the only North American member of Francis’ council of cardinals. In the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, O’Malley served as the chair of the Committee on Pro-Life Activities.
Francis also asked O’Malley to lead the Vatican’s Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.
Leading the commission, O’Malley has advocated for survivors, recently admonishing Vatican dicasteries to stop using the artwork of alleged abuser the Rev. Marko Rupnik and previously calling for Francis’ Synod on Synodality to focus on safeguarding.
FILE – Parishioners kneel as then Providence diocese Bishop Thomas Tobin, right, begins Mass at the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul in Providence, R.I., Friday, Sept. 14, 2018. The Providence diocese and its parishioners have for many years been a part of the conversation around abuse in the church. (AP Photo/Jennifer McDermott)
But Catholic clergy sexual abuse watchdog group Bishop Accountability called O’Malley’s a “legacy of failure” in a statement released on his retirement. The group referenced a list of accused clergy in the Archdiocese of Boston, saying it is missing 91 accused diocesan priests, as well as members of religious orders, priests from other dioceses who served in Boston, information about the alleged abuse of each priest and accurate assignment history of accused priests.
“The first measure of Archbishop Henning’s performance in his new job will be the release of a new list of accused Boston clergy that shows his commitment to accountability and transparency,” the organization wrote.
Bishop Accountability called into question Henning’s previous posts as auxiliary bishop in Rockville Centre, “a deeply corrupt diocese whose bankruptcy has been one of the most expensive and dysfunctional,” and as bishop in Providence, “where his presence did not change in the slightest a policy of secrecy and mistreatment of survivors.”
“Henning must fix O’Malley’s list, if he is to be his own man in Boston, and someone whom survivors and all Catholics can trust,” the organization wrote.
Michael McDonnell, communications director for Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, told RNS that, with this transition, “We can’t forget the past or present. We especially can never forget victims who have yet to step forward.
“Just because a new bishop takes the cathedra, doesn’t mean any child or adult is safer from harm by those employed by those who minister,” McDonnell wrote.
At the press conference for his new appointment, Henning said he had grown up in the generation that had lived through the abuse crisis and that it had been “painful” for him over the course of his life.
“If I have failed you, if a leader in the church has failed you, I’m so sorry, but God has not failed you. God is still with you,” said Henning, calling it tragic if “my actions or failures” would be the reason “for you to lose your relationship with God.”
Saying that survivors “often have as much to proclaim to us about the Gospel as we would to them,” Henning said survivors deserve “a listening heart.”
Of Boston Catholics who had left the church due to clergy abuse, the archbishop-elect said, “I’ll listen to their pain, their woundedness.”
