Interim administrator Hebda named archbishop of Twin Cities archdiocese

The Rev. Bernard Hebda has been named archbishop of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, church officials announced Thursday morning.

Hebda has been the acting leader of the archdioceses since June 15, 2015 after Archbishop John Nienstedt resigned in the wake of a clergy sex abuse scandal, a series of related lawsuits and investigations, and a bankruptcy filing.

Hebda, 56, was appointed Thursday morning by Pope Francis.

Hebda said he was "humbled by this expression of Pope Francis's confidence and honored to serve this Archdiocese with its rich history and its long tradition of extraordinary priests, zealous religious and empowered laity, all working to put their faith into action."

Hedba has been splitting his time between the Twin Cities and Newark, N.J., where he was on track to succeed Archbishop John J. Myers this year. Instead, Hebda will oversee the Twin Cities archdiocese.

continue at Star Tribune

An interesting appointment.  It sounds like he made himself very accessible to the people, which obviously is the sign of a good leader.

Ray sent this:

I was at a small meeting last month, maybe 30-40 parishioners, at Our Lady of Lourdes when he showed up and spoke for a bit.

With all of the problems he will be facing here, financial, organizational, etc., I think we are extremely blessed to have received such a holy and able man as our new Archbishop.

From The Catholic Spirit

The Pittsburgh native called the archbishop appointment to St. Paul and Minneapolis a “shock,” because he never seriously entertained the idea of staying in Minnesota, he said, even though many in the archdiocese said they hoped he would.

“I . . . knew that Pope Francis had already given me responsibilities in the Archdiocese of Newark, so really that’s what I’d been thinking of all along,” he said. “Monday evening we had our chrism Mass in Newark, so I was already taking notes about what I would hope to do at next year’s chrism Mass. That was 12 hours before the nuncio called.”

Also shocking, he said, was the short time between the nuncio’s call and the Holy See’s announcement. Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, apostolic nuncio to the United States, called him March 22, two days before the Holy Thursday announcement.

The urgency, he said, was related to the encouragement Pope Francis wanted to show the archdiocese, he said.

Rocco says:

In an exceedingly rare nod on the Triduum's opening day, at Roman Noon the Pope named Archbishop Bernard Hebda, 56 – the long-stalled coadjutor of Newark initially parachuted in to tackle the situation as apostolic administrator – as the ninth archbishop of St Paul and Minneapolis, giving the most significant and, by far, challenging assignment on the current US docket to a figure who's already scored high marks among its people for taking on a pastoral, administrative, financial and legal disaster with an approach rooted in savvy, outreach and compassion.

A onetime secretary to the future Cardinal Donald Wuerl who spent a decade in Rome as the third-in-command at the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts

With the archdiocese in ongoing negotiations with Ramsey County prosecutors over the resolution of the criminal charges, the outcome of those talks and the three-year statewide "window" suspending the civil statute of limitations on abuse claims has left the most pressing hurdle still to come: resolving the 400-plus lawsuits against the Twin Cities' church, and the mammoth settlement it'll require.

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