NEW JERSEY
Whispers in the Loggia
As only Lou Vallone could sum it up: “It just gets better and better, all the time.”
At Roman Noon this Tuesday, reacting with lightning speed to a considerable brutta figura in one of the nation’s largest dioceses, the Pope made his most consequential Stateside move to date, naming Bishop Bernard Hebda, the 54 year-old head of Michigan’s Gaylord diocese, as coadjutor-archbishop of Newark.
In New Jersey’s 1.4 million-member principal church, the Pittsburgh-born star – a beloved, unassuming cleric, yet one armed with degrees from Harvard and Columbia Law and over a decade’s experience in the Vatican’s office for legal affairs – will eventually succeed Archbishop John Myers, 72. One of the US church’s leading conservatives for a quarter-century and an influential figure on both the national and Roman scenes as chairman of the board of the Pontifical North American College, the Illinois-born metropolitan has been embroiled over recent months in an ongoing, increasingly ugly furore over claims of lacking oversight in cases of priests accused of sexual abuse.
While the new coadjutor will likely arrive to begin learning the turf as archbishop-in-waiting within two months, no timetable has yet been indicated for Myers’ handover of the reins. It’s likewise unknown whether the successor-to-be has been granted any special faculties by the Holy See, which would transfer sole authority over specified elements of the archdiocese’s governance to Hebda even while Myers remains in office.
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