Whispers in the loggia: Feeling the Bern, For Good – Pope Names Hebda as Twin Cities Archbishop

Amid an epic storm of clerical misconduct and mishandling of allegations that's engulfed the Twin Cities church in criminal charges, Chapter 11 bankruptcy, some 400 lawsuits and this Holy Thursday brings the 850,000-member fold a richly-deserved Easter gift: the new archbishop, and one who can hit the ground running immediately.

In an exceedingly rare nod on the Triduum's opening day, at Roman Noon the Pope named Archbishop Bernard Hebda, 56 – the long-waiting 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 for tackling a pastoral, administrative, financial and legal mess with an approach rooted in savvy, outreach and compassion.

After a nine-month vacancy, the archbishop-elect succeeds Archbishop John Nienstedt, whose early resignation at 68 was accepted last June in the wake of county-level criminal charges filed against the archdiocesan corporation, citing its lax response to reports of abusive priests. While no counts were levied against Chancery administrators as individuals, the institutional charges led Rome to pull the plug on the Detroit-born prelate, whose two-year attempt to press forward was further complicated both by the penchant for controversy which the polarizing Nienstedt embraced over his eight-year tenure, as well as by a law firm's investigation commissioned by the archdiocese into allegations of sexual misconduct by the archbishop himself with adult males over several decades.

As the report nor its conclusions have ever emerged, Nienstedt's defenders have resolutely insisted upon his innocence of both the personal misconduct claims and any assertions of wrongdoing in abuse cases. Accordingly, having briefly taken up at a parish in Michigan early this year – before a public outcry forced his departure within days – the retired archbishop reportedly sought to portray his ouster from office as being driven by "critics" who, he said, "would like to punish me" for "strong stance that I was forced to take in defense of Catholic teachings, particularly the defense of marriage." Having initially agreed to Nienstedt's stepping in to aid the parish's ill pastor, Bishop Paul Bradley of Kalamazoo subsequently apologized to the entire diocese, saying he hadn't "foreseen the full impact and strong emotional reaction to his presence" there.

Developing – more to come.

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by Rocco Palmo via Whispers in the Loggia