ROME – Capping more than twenty years as one of American Catholicism’s most influential leaders, Cardinal Sean O’Malley’s tenure as the Archbishop of Boston ended Monday as the Vatican announced Pope Francis has accepted his resignation and named Bishop Richard Henning of Providence as his successor.
Henning now becomes a metropolitan archbishop, with direct authority over Boston and an indirect supervisory role over six other dioceses in Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.
The Vatican’s Aug. 5 statement confirmed rumors first reported by Rocco Palmo, a veteran Catholic writer, indicating that O’Malley, who turned 80 earlier this summer and is no longer able to vote in the next conclave, was retiring and being replaced by Henning.
A Capuchin Franciscan, O’Malley has served as the Archbishop of Boston since 2003. Prior to Boston, he served as bishop of Saint Thomas in the American Virgin Islands, then as bishop of Fall River, Massachusetts, and then as bishop of Palm Beach, Florida.
Speaking an idiomatically fluent Spanish, O’Malley has long had a reputation for his work with and advocacy on behalf of migrants and the impoverished, having served various immigrant communities.
He is also well known for his efforts to advance child protection, having taken over in Boston for Cardinal Bernard Law, who resigned in 2002 amid the fallout of the clerical sexual abuse scandals, including allegations of coverup, that exploded in the United States after a massive exposé by the Boston Globe, leading the entire national church to adopt a sweeping reform of safeguarding policies.
O’Malley in 2013 was selected as an original member the pope’s then-newly formed Council of Cardinals advising him on matters of church governance and reform, to represent North America. He is one of the few original members to remain in the group.
In large part because of his successful reform efforts in safeguarding, O’Malley in 2014 was also tapped to lead the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors (PCPM), a role in which he has had to navigate several high-profile cases, including the scandals in 2018 surrounding American former cardinal and former priest Theodore McCarrick, and the ongoing case of Slovenian Father Marko Rupnik.
O’Malley recently made waves for penning a letter to the prefects and heads of Vatican departments asking them to exercise “pastoral prudence” in the display, including online, of artwork produced by Rupnik, who is accused of abusing at least 30 adult women.
His letter came shortly after Italian layman Paolo Ruffini, prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for Communications, had caused backlash for defending his departments continued use of Rupnik’s artwork on their website, and for implying that the abuse was not as serious since it did not involve minors.
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Despite stepping down as archbishop of Boston, O’Malley is expected to stay on at the commission for the time being at the personal request of Pope Francis.
