Start spreading the news: Hicks gets the New York Archdiocese

Hicks's appointment in New York comes after a major settlement regarding at least 1,300 clergy sexual abuse claims there.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the current archbishop of New York, reached 75 on February 6, while Hicks, his replacement reached 58 back in August.

By Rodolfo Soriano-Núñez

Late on Monday afternoon in the Western hemisphere, news about the appointment of the new head of the Archdiocese of New York, a major see of the Catholic Church in the United States emerged.

Bishop Ronald Aldon Hicks, currently at the small diocese of Joliet, Illinois is about to be appointed by Pope Leo XIV as the new archbishop of New York, replacing Cardinal Timothy Dolan who sent, upon reaching 75 in February of this year, his letter of resignation to Pope Francis.

This weekend, the archdiocese reached a deal regarding a settlement with survivors of clergy sexual abuse, forcing Dolan to announce the sale of the property at 455 Madison Avenue, which serves as the ground lease for the Lotte New York Palace Hotel—a location less than a block from St. Patrick’s Cathedral, in Midtown Manhattan.

It is expected that selling the property will provide the Archdiocese with 300 million USD to settle a total of 1,300 claims of clergy sexual abuse at the hands of an unknown number of Catholic clergy dating back to the 1970s.

Dolan’s tenure in New York has been marred by his approach to the wider abuse crisis, including the high-profile investigation he was mandated by the Holy See to oversee as Metropolitan into the allegations against the former Bishop of Brooklyn, New York, Nicholas Anthony DiMarzio. DiMarzio eventually resigned in September 2021, after a protracted scandal.

DiMarzio’s probe coincided with the then ongoing probe into now-deceased sexual predator Theodore McCarrick, an inquiry in which Dolan was also involved. The peak crisis years for both probes—a period when the U.S. Catholic hierarchy was under maximum scrutiny and major reports were being released and investigations conducted—go from 2017 through 2021, with Cardinal Dolan playing a role in both.

McCarrick’s involvement in the New York archdiocese’s history stretches back to his time as seminarian, priest, and auxiliary bishop from the 1950s until 1981, when Pope John Paul II appointed him as bishop of Metuchen, New Jersey.

Accusations against Dolan have clouded his career ever since his days as headmaster of the seminary and auxiliary bishop at Saint Louis, Missouri and after that when he was appointed, in 2002, as archbishop of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

There, he dealt in very opaque ways with the probe on the more than 200 sexual abuse cases at the Saint John’s School for the Deaf, where he ultimately enforced Joseph Ratzinger’s decision to spare predator priest Lawrence Murphy from a canonical trial, because he was already too sick.

During his years in New York, Dolan had to deal with the aftermath of several cases of clergy sexual abuse in the archdiocese and its suffragan dioceses, those of Albany, Brooklyn, Buffalo, Ogdensburg, Rochester, Rockville Centre, and Syracuse, in the state of New York.

Dolan was one of the religious leaders attending Donald Trump’s inauguration. At the time, he led one of the prayers during the early stages of the inauguration at the Capitol, in Washington, DC.

Dolan became notorious in the aftermath of the Conclave electing Robert Prevost as Pope Leo XIV in the early days of May of this year because he did his best to portray himself as a “Pope maker” of sorts, implying that somehow Prevost owed his election to Dolan’s ability to swing votes in his favor.

Also, because Dolan was one of the few prelates, worldwide, who already in February of this year, were shooting memos to his subordinates in the curia of the Archdiocese under his care to instruct as to how they were expected to manage the funerals of a Pope who although sick and secluded in the Gemelli Hospital was still alive and making decisions and appointments on his own, as the PDF after this paragraph shows.

For some observers, Dolan’s decision to issue memos on how to deal with Pope Francis’s death were a sign of the kind of conflicts the Argentine Pope had during his tenure, but also a harbinger of the kind of power struggle that ultimately happened after his death.

It must be noted that usually, at least for the last 15 years or so, one learns about these appointments over the Bollettino of the Holy See, the daily summary of activities of the reigning Pope, available over the Holy See’s website.

This Monday, the Bolletino was not published at all. The news came, oddly enough, from Religión Digital (content in Spanish), a Spanish-speaking medium based in Spain, and, from there spread into other outlets in both the English- and Spanish-speaking worlds.

It is unclear at this point why the Holy See broke years of protocol when dealing with the appointment, but as soon as the news emerged, Vatican officials were willing to confirm the appointment on condition of anonymity.

The news coincided with the intense debate over the Trump administration’s handling of the fallout from the assassination of film director Rob Reiner and his wife, an event exploited to fuel the cultural wars ravaging U.S. media.

Hicks’s appointment is a win for Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich, one of the most loyal bishops and Cardinals in the Francis’s camp during the Argentine Pope’s tenure. Notably, Cupich is already 76, he will turn 77 next March, and there are no signs of the appointment of his successor in Chicago.

He unsuccessfully sought the leadership of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and also tried to promote changes in the priorities of that body, as to align them with those of the late Pope Francis’s on matters such as global warming and poverty.

Although Dolan never publicly challenged Pope Francis, he was never perceived to be close to Jorge Mario Bergoglio, while at different points he hinted at least some will to appear close, instead, to Donald Trump. He was one of the religious leaders blessing Trump on his inauguration day, as the video linked after this paragraph shows.

Hicks is only 58, so he could have a long tenure at New York. Pope Francis originally appointed him auxiliary to Cupich in Chicago in 2018. He remained two years there, as in July 2020, Pope Bergoglio sent him to Joliet, a suffragan diocese to Chicago.

Usually, the archbishop of New York becomes Cardinal at some point in his career. The fact that Hicks is as “young” as he is, increases the chances of him becoming a Cardinal eventually.

Early on Tuesday 16, the Bollettino published an edition for Monday 15, without the usual Resignations and Appointments section. Said section for Tuesday 16 contains only an appointment for the diocese of Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka. (This is a developing story. Last modified on Tuesday, December 16, 2025 15:57 Central European Time, 9:57 ET.)

Very early on Thursday 18, the Bollettino confirmed the information published here.