A New Archbishop for New York City

Good morning. It’s Friday. Today we’ll look at how Ronald Hicks, who will be installed today as the Roman Catholic archbishop of New York, envisions the job. And with the death toll from the recent cold now at 17, we’ll look at what the city could have done differently to help people.

Ronald Hicks stood in what amounts to the Manhattan headquarters of the organization he has been named to run and said that he did not want to be seen “as only the C.E.O.” or a corporate president.

Hicks, who will be installed today as the Roman Catholic archbishop of New York, was explaining how he envisioned his new role after five years as the bishop of Joliet, Ill. “I’m called here to be a shepherd,” he said.

But the Archdiocese of New York is “a huge corporation, if you want to look at it that way,” said David Gibson, the director of the Center on Religion and Culture at Fordham University. At its center is St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, where Hicks appeared at a news conference on Thursday. But Gibson noted that the archdiocese has 264 parishes, “each of them like a branch office.”

“Not to be too irreverent, but the archdiocese looks more like Dunkin’ Donuts,” Gibson said, and the formula for success as an archbishop is the same as for a corporate executive. “You have to delegate,” he said. “But at the same time, you have to make sure that you’re serving people and you have quality control.”

The archdiocese is different from a large corporation, of course: The person at the top does not earn multiples of what employees make. The archbishop’s salary is the same as a parish priest’s — $3,344 a month. And with degrees in philosophy and divinity and experience running a home for abandoned children in Latin America, Hicks arrives with a résumé that is different from those of most chief executives. “No bishop has an M.B.A.,” Gibson said.

“Even if you have an M.B.A., you can’t run the archdiocese of New York alone,” he said. “If he wants to be a shepherd, which he does, he will find people who will help him to do the business of the church.” That involves approving large expenditures, Gibson said — including potential payouts from a $300 million fund for victims of sexual abuse by priests.

Hicks did not address the church’s sexual abuse crisis on Thursday. He mentioned immigrants — his own family, who he said had come from Germany, Ireland and Poland, as well as people he knew from his time in Latin America — but did not address the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration. He said that a prayer service was “not a time for setting an agenda or promoting my vision.”

That will come today, with a mass celebrating his installation.

Hicks said that he had asked those planning the ceremony to make it “joyful but not triumphant.” He also asked “to make sure that we include some Spanish” to take into account how he had been shaped by his time in Latin America. And one of the readers will be Samuel Jimenez Correa, an orphan who was thrown in the trash as an infant in El Salvador and went on to attend college in Chicago.

Hicks’s appointment by Pope Leo XIV seemed to signal a change for the city that Pope John Paul II once called the “archbishop capital of the world.” It is a world of money and media that often blares and yells. Hicks’s leadership may be a departure from that of his predecessor, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who has led the archdiocese since 2009.

By tradition, the archbishop has been a power player in the city. But Hicks said on Thursday that he had not yet spoken to Mayor Zohran Mamdani, though he said he looked forward to getting to know him.

“There are going to be things that we disagree on,” he said. “There are, but I’d also like to make sure we pay attention to what are those things that we can work together for the common good.”

Weather

Expect a mostly cloudy day with a high near 30 degrees. Some snow is expected late tonight, though the accumulation will amount to less than an inch. The low will be around 28 degrees.

ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING

Suspended for snow removal.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Recent reporting has created a distraction and has placed a focus on me that is not in the best interests of the firm.” — Brad Karp, who resigned as chairman of the Manhattan-based law firm Paul Weiss, on embarrassing emails between him and Jeffrey Epstein that were among the mountain of documents and messages released last week by the Justice Department.

The latest Metro news

How Hochul improved her prospects: Gov. Kathy Hochul, whose future seemed less than certain only a year ago, heads to the state Democratic convention this weekend in a position of strength. But her re-election campaign faces a challenge from Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado, who has cut ties with her and is gearing up to run against her in the June primary.
Woman charged in attacks targeting Muslims: A Staten Island woman has been charged with hate crimes in connection with a series of assaults last week that targeted Muslims, including a 12-year-old girl.

Partnering with the W.H.O.: The city’s Health Department joined a World Health Organization network aimed at countering new pathogens and emerging outbreaks. The move, the city’s latest effort to establish alliances with health agencies elsewhere, came after the Trump administration formally withdrew the United States from the W.H.O.
What we’re watching: On “New York Times Close Up With Sam Roberts,” Jeffery C. Mays, a Times reporter who covers politics, looks at how Mayor Zohran Mamdani is addressing a multibillion‑dollar budget gap, the winter weather and his affordability promises. The program is broadcast on CUNY TV at 7:30 p.m. on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.

When it’s so cold, what can the city do?

Seventeen people in New York City have died in frigid temperatures in the last 13 days — on street corners, in parks and outside hospitals. That is more than the 14 who died in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida in 2021.

My colleagues Dana Rubinstein, Mihir Zaveri and Andy Newman write that the death toll is raising questions about what the city government could have done differently to help those who are vulnerable.

“As a lifelong New Yorker, I can’t remember the last time we had such a massive number of fatalities in such a short time frame because of extremely cold weather,” said Councilwoman Crystal Hudson, who chairs the City Council’s Committee on General Welfare.

In addition, the city received almost 80,000 complaints about a lack of residential heat or hot water in January — the largest total on record for a single month.

January was also Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first month on the job. It may be remembered for the cold that followed a snowstorm on Jan. 25.

Since then, his administration has announced several initiatives, including setting up warming centers, offering overtime to workers who conduct outreach to homeless people, and opening 150 beds in specialized shelters that provide more privacy. The mayor himself appears in a video playing on the LinkNYC kiosks on city streets. The message is to call 311 or 911 for help getting indoors.

But his Jan. 5 decision to put a temporary stop on the clearing of homeless encampments on the streets is under particular scrutiny, even as the mayor says that the city has so far been unable to link any deaths to encampments. He has also cited data showing that the encampment sweeps under his predecessor, Eric Adams, did little to connect people to housing.

METROPOLITAN diary