ROME — Pope Leo XIV named a new archbishop of Westminster on Friday in another high-profile appointment that signals a generational shift in the English-speaking Catholic hierarchy.
Leo tapped Bishop Richard Moth, 67, to replace the retiring Cardinal Vincent Nichols, 80, as the London-based archbishop of the largest British diocese in terms of Catholic population and priests.
The appointment came a day after Leo named Bishop Ronald Hicks, 58, to succeed the retiring Cardinal Timothy Dolan as archbishop of New York, one of the biggest and most important archdioceses in the U.S.
Dolan and Nichols had been two of the heavyweight English-speaking cardinals for more than a decade, both of them appointed to their high-profile jobs in 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI.
Nichols would become more closely associated with Pope Francis, who made him a cardinal in 2014 and kept him on the job well beyond the normal retirement age for bishops of 75.
Dolan, who is affiliated more with the conservative wing of the church, had submitted his resignation to Francis in February, as required by church law when he turned 75. Leo accepted it 10 months later, soon after Dolan finalized the creation of a $300 million settlement fund for victims of clergy sexual abuse.
Leo has indicated that he wants to respect the 75-year-old retirement age norm more vigorously going forward, as a way to reinvigorate the church leadership, though he allowed that there could still be two-year extensions granted for cardinals.
Leo made the comments last month in a speech to Italian bishops, saying the church has to “constantly renew itself” to confront today’s challenges. “We must prevent inertia from slowing necessary change, even for good intentions,” he said on Nov. 25.
Moth was born in Chingola, Zambia, and has served as bishop of Arundel and Brighton since 2015. Prior to that, he was bishop to the British armed forces.
He takes over at Westminster Cathedral, which is considered the mother church for Catholics in England and Wales.
In another appointment announced Friday, Leo accepted the resignation of Bishop Gerald Barbarito, 75, as bishop of Palm Beach, Florida, and named as his replacement the Rev. Manuel de Jesús Rodríguez, currently pastor of the Our Lady of Sorrows church in the Queens borough of New York City.
With 17,000 congregants in the mostly Hispanic neighborhood of Corona, the church is the largest parish in the Diocese of Brooklyn, which also oversees churches in Queens. It was particularly hard-hit during COVID-19, losing more than 100 of its parishioners.
Winfield writes for the Associated Press.
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