Pope Francis’ Conn. appointment draws criticism

David Yonke

TOLEDO, Ohio (RNS) Vatican watchers waiting for the “Pope Francis effect” to guide the Roman Catholic Church in the United States into a new era did not see it in the pope’s recent appointment of Toledo Bishop Leonard Blair as archbishop of Hartford, Conn.

Robert Mickens, a Toledo native who covers the Vatican for The Tablet, a highly respected Catholic newsweekly in London, said from Rome that Francis has been critical of “careerist” bishops who aspire to larger dioceses, yet Francis promoted Blair who is “a careerist, no doubt.”

“It’s just more of the same,” Mickens said. “It’s clear that the same old ‘old-boys network’ is at work.”

In little more than six months on the job, Francis has named nearly a dozen bishops in the U.S., but only two — Blair to Hartford, and Bernard Hebda as the coadjutor archbishop of Newark, N.J. — have received major media attention. Hebda will inherit a diocese with a troubled record on sex abuse, and Blair was best known as the man Pope Benedict XVI tapped to lead an investigation on American nuns.

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