2023-06-27 01:49:00
By Ary Waldir Ramos Diaz
June 26, 2023 / 6:49 p.m.
Pope Francis appointed Bishop Christopher J. Coyne as Coadjutor Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Hartford, United States.
Bishop Coyne has directed the Diocese of Burlington, in the state of Vermont, since 2015. The 65-year-old bishop was previously Auxiliary Bishop of Indianapolis from 2011-2015.
Originally from Woburn, Massachusetts, Coyne worked as a waiter for two years before entering the seminary.
He was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Boston at age 27. Following his ordination, he studied in Rome, at the Pontifical Liturgical Institute, where he received his doctorate in Sacred Liturgy in 1994. He was appointed director of the Archdiocese’s Office of Worship in 2000.
Cardinal Bernard Law appointed him as spokesman for the Archdiocese of Boston in 2002, a position he held for three years at the height of the Archdiocese’s sexual abuse scandal.
Later he was president of communications for the United States Conference of Bishops from 2015 to 2018 and a member of the Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis and the Committee on Divine Worship of the US bishops.
Bishop Christopher Coyne is expected next year to succeed Bishop Leonard Blair, who has led the Archdiocese of Hartford for the past 10 years. Before coming to Connecticut, Blair was Bishop of Toledo, Ohio from 2003 to 2013 and Auxiliary Bishop of Detroit, Michigan from 1999 to 2003.
Among the different pastoral initiatives carried out by Msgr. Blair, he initiated a pastoral plan in 2016 to revitalize the Archdiocese of Hartford, which contemplated combining neighboring churches into a single parish, reducing the number of parishes from 213 to 127. He also convened a Synod archdiocesan in 2018.
The Archdiocese of Hartford includes New Haven and Litchfield counties and has nearly 470,000 Catholics. Pope Gregory XVI established Hartford as a diocese in 1843.
Ary Waldir Ramos Díaz is a correspondent for ACI Prensa in Rome and the Vatican. He is a Vatican journalist with more than 10 years of experience.
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