Leo, the first U.S. pope, appointed Bishop Ronald Hicks from Illinois, to replace Dolan as leader of the nation’s second-largest Catholic diocese, home to some 2.8 million Church members.
Dolan, Archbishop of New York since 2009 and a former president of the U.S. Catholic bishops’ conference, offered to resign in February upon turning 75, as required by Church law. Cardinals often serve until 80, the mandatory retirement age.
The New York archdiocese is among the largest in the US and the pick ends months of speculation about who would follow Dolan, widely regarded as being close to US President Donald Trump. The New York archdiocese is among the largest in the US and the pick ends months of speculation about who would follow Dolan, widely regarded as being close to US President Donald Trump.
This is the most important bishop appointment Leo has made since his election to head up the world’s Catholics in May and signals a desire to take a firmer stance on the US administration’s decisions, particularly on human rights.
Hicks shares several similarities with Leo including solidarity with migrants, in contrast with Trump’s deportation drive.
In November, he endorsed a rare statement from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops which heavily criticised the administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policies.Hicks spent five years of ministry in El Salvador in Central America, heading a church-run orphanage programme that operated across nine Latin American and Caribbean countries. Leo spent two decades in service in Peru.
The outgoing bishop of Joliet, Illinois, also served in several parishes in the Archdiocese of Chicago, the city where Leo was born — though the pair only met for the first time in 2024.
Dolan oversaw the fallout from a major sexual abuse scandal in the diocese. Just a couple of weeks ago, the archdiocese announced the creation of a $300 million fund to compensate victims of sexual abuse who had filed complaints against the Church.
At the time, Dolan said that a “series of very difficult financial decisions” were made, including layoffs within the archdiocese and a 10-percent reduction of its operating budget.
Hicks is no stranger to managing the fallout of the abuse scandal. The Joliet diocese he now leaves was criticised under his predecessors for its handling of paedophile priests.
The scandal was “something that is never going to be behind us”, Hicks told Vatican News.