Archbishop Kurtz elected president of US bishops' conference
Baltimore, USA, 13 Nov 2013: The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has elected on
Tuesday Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville as its next president, giving national
prominence to a prelate with significant experience in Catholic social services.
Archbishop
Kurtz, 67, has served as the conference vice president since 2010. He was elected
conference president at the conference’s fall assembly in Baltimore on Nov. 12. He
will serve a three-year term.
The bishops’ conference president plays a significant
role in coordinating and leading charitable and social work and education, while providing
a public face for the Catholic Church in the U.S.
Archbishop Kurtz served as
Bishop of Knoxville from 1999-2007. He was a priest of the Diocese of Allentown, Pa.
for 27 years, with a special focus in social services, diocesan administration, and
parish ministry. He served as the director of the diocese’s Catholic Charities affiliate
from 1988 to 1998 and was an executive director of the diocese’s Catholic Social Agency
and Family Life Bureau.
He is the vice chancellor of the board of the Catholic
Extension Society and an adviser to the Catholic Social Workers National Association,
the Archdiocese of Louisville website says. He is on the board of directors of the
National Catholic Bioethics Center and on the advisory board to the cause for the
canonization of Servant of God Archbishop Fulton Sheen.
The archbishop has
previously served as chair of the U.S. bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for the Defense of
Marriage and Family Life.
He recently co-authored a booklet on the vocation
of Christian parenthood and Christian parents’ relationship with their parish. The
booklet focuses on a prayer called “The Blessing of the Child in the Womb,” which
was drafted by the U.S. bishops’ conference.
Archbishop Kurtz was born in Mahanoy
City, Pa. in 1946. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in divinity from St.
Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia. He holds a master’s degree in social work
from the Marywood School of Social Work in Scranton, Pa.
The election of Archbishop
Kurtz marks a return to the customary practice of electing the conference vice president
to the presidency. In 2010, the U.S. bishops broke with this tradition by choosing
then-Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York as their conference head instead of the
conference’s vice president at the time, Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, Ariz.
The
bishops’ conference elected Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston as its
vice president.Source: CNA/EWTN News