That’s the typical time frame between the announcement and the installation of a Catholic bishop.

But a date for Muhich to be ordained — and then installed — as bishop in Rapid City is uncertain because of the COVID-19 pandemic’s effect on public services, church officials said after the announcement was made Tuesday, May 12. Public Masses and about all other public uses of churches were stopped in mid-March until further notice.

Muhich said he has no idea yet when he might be ordained a bishop, or when he will move to Rapid City.

“I’m looking forward to it; it’s like a new adventure,” Muhich said told the Capital Journal this week. “I’m really looking forward to moving to the south.”

“Archbishop (Bernard) Hebda told me Bishop Gruss shot a buffalo while he was there. I don’t know if he’s telling me I have to kill a buffalo.”

Hebda, as head of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, has some administrative responsibilities over the dioceses in the Dakotas and Minnesota, although all bishops are equal in essential ways.

The Rapid City diocese covers the area west of the Missouri River in South Dakota, and has about 88 parishes with about 31,000 members, about 13% of the region's 239,000 people.

It’s about as small a diocese as there is in the U.S. in terms of parish members; only the Diocese of Crookston in northwest Minnesota has as few. The Rapid City diocese has about 40 active priests.

But two recent bishops in Rapid City have risen in the church.

Charles Chaput, bishop in Rapid City 1988-1997, went on to be archbishop in Denver and now in Philadelphia.

Blase Cupich, bishop in Rapid City from 1998-2010, now is Cardinal Cupich, overseeing the archdiocese of Chicago and one of only five of the Church’s cardinals in the U.S.

Muhich, who turned 59 on Wednesday, May 13, the day after his appointment was announced, was born in Eveleth, on the Iron Range of northeast Minnesota, between Duluth and the Canadian border.

He grew up one of seven children born to Louis and Sally Muhich in a town that’s been a hotbed of hockey and mining and Catholicism for most of a century.

Muhich said Eveleth, when he was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, was “surrounded by mine dumps,” and bustling with the ethnic variety from immigrants from Europe.

They came there to wrest the iron ore out of the ground that got loaded on to ships such as the Edmund Fitzgerald at the port of Duluth that sailed across Lake Superior to become steel.

Eveleth was “about two-thirds Catholic,” Muhich said of his childhood. “In a town of 4,500 to 5,000 people, there were three Catholic parishes, one for the Irish, one for the Italians and one for the Slovenians, which is my ancestry,” he said.

“We moved when I was about 7, to the other side of town. So I would walk past the Italian church to our church and I would sneak in and attend Mass. They had an Italian-speaking priest from Chicago. And he would swear at them all the time in broken English.”

Some of hockey’s greats have come out of Eveleth, including John Mariucci who helped found the University of Minnesota’s hockey program three-quarters of a century ago. Mark Pavelich, who starred on the legendary 1980 Olympic hockey team that made “The Miracle on ice,” was in high school three years ahead of Muhich. The U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame is in Eveleth.

“I played hockey until I was in middle school," Muhich told the Capital Journal. "Then I went to one sport and played football in high school. And I started working in my dad’s drug store when I was 11.”

“My dad was a pharmacist. It was called Eveleth Pharmacy. We didn’t have a soda fountain. But we did have liquor. That was the Iron Range. We had eight bars on Main Street in Eveleth back then.”

It was a hard-working town. His brothers and sisters worked in the family store, too.

“My mother even did. I was paid 75 cents an hour for sweeping the floor, taking out the garbage. I had saved $12,000 by the time I was ready to go to college.”

He attended seminary at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, an alma mater he shares with new Bishop Donald DeGrood in the Diocese of Sioux Falls; and with Cardinal Cupich.

After graduating from St. Thomas in 1983, he studied at the American College of The Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, completing a License in Sacred Theology, an STL, that would allow him to teach in college.

Muhich was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Duluth on Sept. 19, 1989 and has for the past 11 years served as rector of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Rosary in Duluth.

The Duluth diocese suddenly was without a bishop recently: Bishop Paul David Sirba died of a heart attack at 59 on Dec. 1 after serving a decade as bishop.

Muhich has been involved for years in leadership positions in the Duluth diocese which comprises 56,000 Catholics in 92 parishes in northeast Minnesota. Sirba’s death meant Muhich went along as a representative from Duluth with bishops from the region in a visit to Rome to meet with Pope Francis earlier this year.

There was no particular priest Muhich looks back on as influencing him especially toward the priesthood.

“It was just seeing a lot of different priests, seeing them as a normal part of life. So it was normal to think about being one, possibly.”

His mother and father were devout Catholics and would invite the parish priest over for dinner regularly.

“My father had considered going to seminary when he was still in pharmacy school. But he was dating my mother at the same time and she won!”

That makes it especially meaningful for his parents, now in their mid-80s, to have a son about to become a bishop.

“My brothers and sisters are just like any brothers and sisters. They give me a hard time.”

Muhich hopes all his family can attend his ordination, whenever it gets scheduled. “But it’s hard to know with this coronavirus thing,” he said.

The Rev. James Bissonette, administrator of the Duluth diocese, told the Catholic World magazine that Muhich will make a good bishop.

“I know him to be a very good person, an exemplary priest and a fine friend,” Bissonette said. “He is kind and considerate, with a keen mind, leadership qualities and a strong, steady faith.”

Cardinal Blase Cupich in Chicago touched base with Muhich already.

“He called me the other day. He was very kind and told me Rapid City was his first diocese and that he just wanted to congratulate me.”

Muhich described his childhood faith and interest in the priesthood as happening well before the child abuse scandals in the church that came to public attention beginning in the 1980s.

Now that reality will be part of his work in Rapid City, he said.

“It has to be part of every bishop’s ministry,” Muhich told the Capital Journal. “To make sure we are doing everything possible to prevent the abuse of children by anybody, especially by priests, for God’s sake. Making sure the church is a safe place for all, working to prevent any abuse and, if, God forbid, it should happen, to cooperate with law enforcement and let them do their job.”

Muhich said he has no idea when he will be ordained a bishop and installed because of the way the COVID-19 pandemic has stopped normal church activities. A bishop’s ordination and installation normally involves many bishops and church officials traveling to attend.

Until that ceremony can be scheduled, the Rev. Michel Mulloy will continue as administrator, in charge of the Rapid City diocese, Muhich said this week.

Only a bishop can ordain new priests or assign pastors to a term in a parish, but for now things can keep on as they have since July, Mulloy said.

Muhich said he likely will move to Rapid City to live in the bishop’s residence even before he finds out when his ordination will take place.

“At some point this summer, I’m sure I will make the move. We are still talking about that. I can start to get to know everyone. And it’s going to be odd if I’m sitting in Duluth for many months. I may as well move there.”