Transition in Louisville

The Holy Father has accepted the retirement of the Most Reverend Thomas C. Kelly, OP, as Archbishop of Louisville, Kentucky (USA) and has named as the new Archbishop the Most Reverend Joseph E. Kurtz, up to now Bishop of Knoxville, Tennessee. Archbishop-elect Kurtz was born in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania in 1946, attended parochial school, and studied at Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary in Philadelphia. He was ordained for his home diocese of Allentown in 1972. He served as an assistant pastor, a teacher on the high school and college levels, and an assistant director of vocations. In 1976 he received a master’s degree in social work from the Marywood School of Social Work in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He then served on more than a dozen social-service and hospital boards of directors and directed several services, including the Social Action Bureau, the Catholic Social Agency and Family Life Bureau, and Catholic Charities. Beginning in 1986, he served as the pastor of St. Mary Parish in Catasauqua for eight years until being named pastor of Notre Dame of Bethlehem Parish in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Pope John Paul II appointed him bishop of the Diocese of Knoxville in 1999. He is President of the U.S. Bishops’ Conference’s Committee on Marriage and Family, a member of the Pro-Life Committee, and a member of the Board of Governors for the Pontifical North American College in Rome.