N.Y. archdiocese set to get new leader

February 23, 2009|Associated Press

NEW YORK - Archbishop Timothy Dolan of Milwaukee will be appointed the next Roman Catholic archbishop of New York, the Associated Press has learned.

The Vatican is expected to announce Dolan's appointment today, according to a church official with knowledge of Vatican appointments. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the selection.

Joseph Zwilling, spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York, would not comment.

Cardinal Edward Egan, 76, is retiring after nine years as the city's archbishop.

Dolan, 59, has been Milwaukee's archbishop since 2002. He previously served as rector of the North American College in Rome, the elite seminary for US priests, where he had studied for his own ordination years earlier.

He started his priesthood in Missouri.

New York archbishop is the most prominent post in the American Catholic Church.

The archdiocese is the second-largest in the country, behind the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, serving 2.5 million parishioners in nearly 400 churches.

It covers a region from Manhattan to the Catskill Mountains and includes a vast network of 10 colleges and universities, hundreds of schools and social service agencies, and nine hospitals that treat about a million people annually.

Dolan's appointment will continue a chain of Irish-heritage archbishops that was broken only once in two centuries, when a French-born prelate, John Dubois, was appointed to New York in 1826.