VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Pope Leo XIV tapped Bishop Ronald A. Hicks of Joliet, Illinois, to lead the influential Archdiocese of New York, replacing Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who led New York’s 2.8 million Catholics for 16 years. Dolan, following Vatican rules, had tendered his resignation when he turned 75 in February.
Like Leo, Hicks, 58, is a supporter of Pope Francis’ welcoming and inclusive vision of Catholicism with an eye toward social justice. Hicks is also cut from much the same cloth as the current pope. Born in Harvey, Illinois, in 1967, Hicks grew up in South Holland, not far from the Chicago suburb where Leo was raised, and both started discerning their vocations at an early age. Leo, who previously headed the Vatican’s department for appointing bishops, has likely followed Hicks’ career closely.
Dolan, a towering figure in the U.S. church and a natural fit in New York with his bluff style, sometimes drew ire from the city’s mostly Democratic voters for his apparent support of the Trump administration.
Dolan’s “backslapping, gregarious style served him well in that role, but particularly in the Pope Francis era there were missed opportunities where he didn’t seem eager to champion the pope’s priorities,” said Christopher White, author of “Pope Leo XIV: Inside the Conclave and the Dawn of a New Papacy.”
“Hicks’ personality is different from Dolan’s,” White added. “He won’t be shy, and at the same time he will also bring a seriousness and willingness to learn that’s likely to help him on a local level that will be different from Dolan’s larger-than-life persona.”
Hicks was ordained in 1994 by Chicago’s archbishop at the time, Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, with Cardinal Blase Cupich, the current head of the Chicago see, as the principal consecrator.
Hicks aknowledged the similarities between himself and Leo, in an interview earlier this year with WGN, a Chicago TV station. “We grew up literally in the same radius, in the same neighborhood together. We played in the same parks, went swimming in the same pools, liked the same pizza places to go to,” Hicks said, adding, “I mean, it’s that real.”
Their similar biographies “means that it’s personal. Leo recognizes himself in Hicks and vice versa,” said White.
Also like Leo, who spent more than a decade in Peru, Hicks has said he was inspired in his ministry by his time in Latin America, where, from 2005 to 2010, he served in El Salvador as the regional director of Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos, a nonprofit home for thousands of orphans and abandoned children.
He was awed by Latin American Catholics’ devotion to St. Oscar Romero, the archbishop of San Salvador and vocal critic of human rights violations during El Salvador’s civil war, who was assassinated while saying Mass in 1980. Francis made Romero a saint in 2018.
“The encounter of the Latin American church, where his priestly ministry was defined by standing in solidarity with the poor and marginalized, means this is in the DNA of both men, and that’s one of the essential qualities Leo — like Francis — is looking for when he’s assessing candidates for the Catholic hierarchy,” said White, a senior fellow of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life at Georgetown University.
In 2010, Hicks was appointed dean of formation at Mundelein Seminary, at the University of St. Mary of the Lake, in Illinois. The Rev. John Kartje, who worked on his formation team before becoming rector of the seminary, heaped praise on his leadership style.
“ This is someone who is capable of administration at the highest levels, but very much has his heart and soul with the people and particularly marginalized populations,” Kartje said. Hicks later served as vicar general for the Archdiocese of Chicago, an administrative role which Kartje called “ one of the most challenging positions in any diocese.”
As dean of formation, Kartje said he found Hicks to be “ an excellent listener, but also not at all afraid to make decisions,” even as men preparing for the priesthood struggled with really challenging things.
The formation of priests became a throughline in Hicks’ career: He currently serves on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Clergy, Consecrated Life and Vocations, working closely with the Association for the Ongoing Formation of Priests and the National Association of Diaconate Directors.
In 2018, Hicks became an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Chicago, now led by Cupich, and Hicks’ new appointment to lead in New York has the marks of Cupich’s influence. Considered a close ally of Francis, Cupich played a key role in the conclave that elected Leo. “Hicks is of course a protégé of Cardinal Cupich,” White said, while noting that Hicks served under three Chicago archbishops — Bernardin, Cardinal Francis George and Cupich, with different priorities and personalities.
“They all clearly recognized talent in Hicks and the fact that he was able to work closely with all three of them speaks well of his ability to bridge-build with a range of backgrounds and profiles,” said White.
In a 2023 speech in Peru, Leo praised Bernardin and Cupich for their advocacy for what is now known as “the consistent ethic of life,” which put the church’s ardent opposition to abortion within a larger framework that included opposition to capital punishment and protection of the poor and displaced.
“Those who champion the right to life for the most vulnerable among us must be equally visible in supporting the quality of life of others who are vulnerable, including the elderly, children, the hungry, the homeless, and undocumented immigrants,” said Leo at the time.
Leo more recently defended Cupich when the cardinal was criticized by conservative Catholics for recognizing Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, a supporter of abortion rights and champion for refugees and migrants, with a lifetime achievement award from the archdiocese’s Office of Human Dignity and Immigration Solidarity Ministry. Durbin later declined the award.
In September of 2020, Francis appointed Hicks to lead the Diocese of Joliet and its 520,000 Catholics.
As a diocesan bishop, Hicks has had to manage at least one case of alleged clerical sexual abuse, in which a woman claimed in 2023 to have been sexually assaulted by a priest in the diocese, according to a lawsuit she later filed in the Will County Circuit Court. The woman said the diocese did not take her claims seriously, only suspending the priest after she filed suit a year after her initial claim. In her suit, she alleges that Hicks’ office called her “a liar,” according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Hicks’ relative young age means he has the chance to put his imprint on one of the United States’ most powerful archdioceses over many years. New York’s archbishops have historically engaged in the city’s social and political life, and in U.S. politics more broadly. He becomes the face of Catholicism in the city just as Zohran Mamdani is about to be sworn in as its first Muslim mayor.
Becoming archbishop of New York has long meant an automatic red hat from the Vatican.
But the new assignment also comes with challenges. The New York Archdiocese, which recently agreed to mediation to settle 1,300 sex abuse claims, needs to raise $300 million to pay survivors and is in the process of selling Manhattan properties, while restructuring or closing dozens of dwindling parishes.
Over the past decade, vocations have decreased in the archdiocese, which ordained only four new priests in 2025, down from 13 in 2009. (Early reports on Dolan’s “Called by Name” initiative, launched in May, have called its results promising.)
Despite Hicks’ experience in seminary formation, he struggled to bolster vocations in Joliet. In 2020, 33 men were discerning for the priesthood in 2020, but after four years of Hicks’ leadership, the most recent count totaled 27 seminarians. While six new priests were ordained in 2020, only one transitional deacon was ordained in the diocese 2024.
Kartje told RNS that Hicks is “ an excellent supporter of vocations.” Joliet’s seminarians go to Mundelein, and Kartje said that “ for a relatively small diocese, they do quite well with vocations.”
In October, Hicks issued a pastoral letter titled “MAKE,” centered on promoting conversion, confession, Communion and evangelization. In 2024, he led a structural reform that merged some of the diocese’s 100 parishes and closed nine, describing the restructuring as a proactive measure to focus the church’s efforts and to redirect financial resources to ministry instead of payroll and real estate costs. After parishioners at one church petitioned the Vatican’s dicastery for clergy, Hicks backed down and allowed it to remain open.
White described Hicks as “an affable and energetic pastor, someone with real management savvy,” which will likely prove useful in running the major archdiocese. While representing continuity with Francis’ vision for the church, Hicks is, like Leo, more favorably disposed toward the celebration of Mass in the Old Latin Rite, which Francis strongly restricted.
Dolan navigated the polarized landscape of U.S. Catholicism without tipping the balance too strongly to one side or another. He spoke out on behalf of migrants and refugees and criticized anti-immigrant policies, without mentioning President Donald Trump by name, in a July commentary in the New York Daily News. Dolan made overtures to New York’s cultural constituencies, even taking part in the 2018 Met Gala that had as its theme the “Catholic Imagination.”
But nationally, Dolan has aligned himself with conservative politicians, delivering an invocation at the 2020 Republican National Convention and accepting an appointment to Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission in May. Trump has referring to Dolan as “a king” and lobbied for him to become pope after Francis’ death. In an appearance on “Fox & Friends” earlier this year, Dolan described the late conservative speaker Charlie Kirk as a “modern-day St. Paul.”
This is actually great news!
+Hicks is our bishop in the Diocese of Joliet. He has actively protected the TLMs in our diocese. At least on this basis, he would make a very good Archbishop of New York. https://t.co/8yJ9jVnTf9 pic.twitter.com/y87VXp4zyI
— Tridentine Brewing (@TridentineBrew) December 15, 2025
By replacing Dolan with someone more aligned with his own vision for the church, Leo shows he is paying attention to the divisions in the U.S., seeing New York as an opportunity to unite Catholics behind the church’s traditional teachings while raising the archdiocese’s profile on social justice issues.
Aleja Hertzler-McCain contributed to this report.
