Louisville Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz poised for higher calling within the church

LOUISVILLE (KY)
The Courier-Journal

[with video]

Written by
Peter Smith
The Courier-Journal

As the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops gather in Washington the week of Nov. 11, the man they are expected to elect as their new president is Louisville’s archbishop, 67-year-old Joseph E. Kurtz.

It’s one of the most influential positions in American Catholicism, the public face and voice of 445 bishops who shepherd the largest religious body in the United States, with 67 million members.

As president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Kurtz would advocate his colleagues’ views in Washington on such issues as same-sex marriage and the federal mandate for employers to cover contraception for employees. He’d also serve as a conduit to the Vatican, conveying bishops’ concerns to Rome and Rome’s views to them.

He was appointed to his Louisville position under now-retired Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI and has been a vocal advocate in echoing Benedict’s opposition to same-sex marriage and growing secularism in Western culture.

But his expected rise to president of the bishops conference coincides with the new era of Pope Francis, who has created a sensation in the first months of his pontificate by shedding the trappings of wealth, connecting with the poor and issuing gestures of empathy toward gays, the divorced and others estranged from church life and traditional beliefs.

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