Joliet Bishop Ronald A. Hicks is Dolton-born Pope Leo XIV’s choice for the next archbishop of New York, according to a report in the National Catholic Register.
Hicks, 58, who was born in Harvey and raised in South Holland, has led the Diocese of Joliet since September 2020.
The Diocese of Joliet consists of 117 parishes representing more than 500,000 Catholics in DuPage, Will, Grundy, Kankakee, Iroquois and Ford counties, and covers a geographic area of more than 4,200 miles.
The current archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, has served in the position since 2009, and turned 75 this year. Bishops are required to send a letter of resignation to the pope when they reach age 75, and the pope may either accept the resignation or allow them to continue serving.
Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich, 76, submitted his resignation last year but it has not yet been accepted.
During his childhood in South Holland, Hicks attended St. Jude the Apostle Parish and grade school. Through a series of parish consolidations by the Chicago Archdiocese, St. Jude eventually merged with the pope’s home church, St. Mary of the Assumption in Riverdale, to become Christ Our Savior in South Holland.
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Hicks graduated from Quigley Preparatory Seminary South in 1985, according to his official biography on the diocese’s website.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Loyola. He has a master’s and doctorate degree in divinity from the University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein.
Hicks was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Chicago on May 21, 1994. He was an associate pastor at Our Lady of Mercy Parish in Chicago from 1994 to 1996 and at St. Elizabeth Seton Parish in Orland Hills from 1996 to 1999.
From 1999 to 2005, he lived and ministered at St. Joseph College Seminary in Chicago, according to the diocese’s website.
Like the pope, who served as bishop of Chiclayo in Peru and is a naturalized Peruvian citizen, Hicks has lived and worked extensively in Latin America. Hicks moved to El Salvador in 2005 with the archdiocese’s blessing to begin a five-year term as regional director of Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos, an organization that runs a home dedicated to caring for more than 3,400 orphaned and abandoned children in nine Latin American and Caribbean countries.
Hicks, like the pope and Cupich, has expressed concerns about recent federal immigration enforcement actions in the Chicago area. He issued a statement in November voicing his support for a “special message” from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that condemned raids throughout the country.
“We are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement,” the message said, in part. “We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care.”
Requests for comment made to the Joliet Diocese Wednesday morning were not immediately returned.
Hicks returned to Chicago in 2010 to serve as the dean of formation at Mundelein Seminary. In 2015, Cupich appointed Hicks vicar general of the Archdiocese of Chicago. Three years later, he was elevated to auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago.
A longtime ally of Cupich and Pope Francis, Hicks was installed as bishop at Cathedral of St. Raymond Nonnatus Sept. 29, 2020.
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