It was his last Christmas Mass as archbishop of New York. Timothy Dolan celebrated on the night of December 25th in front of hundreds of faithful, who waited for hours in the cold, on the Fifth Avenuebefore entering the cathedral of St. Patrick. From February it will be Ronald Hicks (pictured), 58 years old, current bishop of Joliet, Illinoisto take his place and lead the two million eight hundred thousand faithful of the archdiocese of New Yorkthe second largest in terms of population United States. The transition is proceeding, at least apparently, without any particular problems. “For me, it was like an early Christmas present,” Dolan said, upon hearing the news of Hicks’ appointment. In reality, the US Church is riddled with deep tensions and heated rivalries. The clash is not so much between conservatives and progressives. The real issue of the dispute is that of relations with political power. So, with the Trump administration.
It is often misleading to apply interpretative schemes of public and political debate to the events of the Church of Rome. This was also done in relation to the figure of Cardinal Dolan, defined as “eminent conservative” and a “culture war fighter.” It is certainly true that Dolan has taken very clear positions on the subject of condemnation of abortion and of claiming marriage as the exclusive union of a man and a woman. But these are the official directives of the Church of Rome – and it should be noted, among other things, that Dolan, in many cases, has spoken and acted in ways pleasing to the left. When the governor of Texas Greg Abbott sent hundreds of migrants to New York, to draw attention to the migration crisis in his state, Dolan mobilized to provide new arrivals with food, clothing, legal assistance, access to Catholic schools. Speaking about his meetings with asylum seekers, he said his job was to see them “with the eyes of Jesus”. Dolan later collaborated with progressive New Yorkers on many issues: from the housing crisis to shelters for the homeless assistance to prisoners. And one of the religious personalities he most often cited is Dorothy Daythe anarchist and radical New Yorker, activist for the poorest and the excluded, “servant of God”, according to the Vatican’s definition, awaiting canonization.
L’asse Dolan-Trump
“Cardinal Dolan is not a conservative. He preached the gospel,” he wrote recently Religion News Serviceto underline precisely the substance apoliticality of the teaching of the Archbishop of New York. This appears correct from the point of view of the social doctrine of the Church. Defense of life, of marriage between man and woman, welcome for migrants, assistance for the poorest: Dolan has, in his pastoral activity, carefully respected the indications that Pope Francis emanated from Rome. However, if we move from the social doctrine to the theme of politics, there is no doubt that he was one of those US prelates who accompanied and supported the adventure of Donald Trumpand more generally the increasingly conservative drift of the Republican Party. The cardinal of New York was among the promoters of “Fortnight for Freedom”, the two weeks of prayer and fasting organized by the American bishops against health policies of the Obama administration. Dolan praised the strategy followed by Trump in the hardest months of the pandemic. He gave the religious invocation at Trump’s inauguration in January 2025. He joined an unidentified commission “for religious freedom” wanted by the president. From Charlie Kirkthe far-right activist murdered last September, Dolan said he was “a modern-day St. Paul.”
The position on abortion
These are positions amplified by Dolan’s particularly exuberant and communicative character, which have done nothing to “reconcile differences” and re-establish “a Church in which there are no divisions”, come Francesco he asked the American bishops. On the other hand, the process of politicization of the American Church is ancient and originates in the particular socio-religious conditions of the United States, a country characterized by a plurality of confessions – often aggressively involved in public life, such as evangelicals – and by an increasingly marked polarisation, which has ultimately affected every sector of society, therefore also religion. If, starting from Vatican Council IIthe European churches have accentuated their detachment from governments, in a perspective of mutual respect and autonomy Usa they experienced an opposite process. To hierarchies worried about the emptying of the churches, the crisis of vocations, the many sexual scandals, the progressive secularization of society – in the nineties, 90 percent of Americans defined themselves as Christian; at the beginning of 2020, it was 67 percent – the Republican politics of the last decades, in particular that of Trump, has offered the cancellation of the right to abortion on a federal basis, particularly favorable tax policies, funding for religious schools, fight against woke, trans and everything that can call into question the reassuring opposition of the male/female. It was an exchange that, if it strengthened the temporal status of the Protestant and Catholic churches, limited their independence and undermined religious authority, fueling clashes and divisions.
Prevost in the footsteps of Francesco
It is this American Church so imbued, so intoxicated with politics, that Francis has tried without great success to reform. And it is on this American Church that an American – Robert Francis Prevostbecame pope Leone XIV – try to intervene now. The new pontiff is, temperamentally, more prudent, less impatient and explosive than his predecessor. However, his first decisions, precisely on the subject of the US Church, seem to go in the same direction. The choice of Ronald Hicks The archbishop of New York is exemplary from this point of view. Hicks is, like Prevost, from Illinois. Like Prevost, he worked in Central America, particularly in an orphanage El Salvador. As bishop of a small diocese like that of Joliethas kept himself out of the games of great national politics. He is a protege of the Archbishop of Chicago, the Cardinal Bubble Cupichwho worked with Prevost at the Dicastery for bishops, responsible for appointments and governance of dioceses. Even in Hicks’ case we must avoid falling into the dry conservative/progressive antithesis. When, in 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, then the right to abortion on a federal basis, Hicks exulted with these words: “Today’s decision is an answer to decades of prayers and supports the protection of the most innocent of human lives – the child in the womb – which has long been a fundamental principle of Catholic social teaching.”
Mar a Lago nominates her
Therefore, if Hicks is not a “progressive”, in the sense that the term is commonly given in politics, he is however a prelate who is very far – in terms of training, culture, vision of the world – from Donald Trump and from MAGA world. He himself strongly underlined this when he arrived in New York for the presentation to the city and spoke in Spanish. The gesture was interpreted in the only possible way, namely as a distancing from the migration policies of Trump, by the wave of roundups and deportations of Hispanics that the administration has unleashed. Exactly the question immigration moreover, it appears to be the one on which the Church of Rome tries to highlight its distance from Trump. In November the conference of American bishops criticized the mass deportations, explaining that it wanted “in this context, to raise our voice in defense of human dignity given by God”. And the day after the announcement of Hicks’ nomination, he was still pope Leone XIV the reverend named Manuel de Jesús Rodríguezmember of a predominantly Hispanic congregation in Corona, Queens, bishop of the Diocese of Florida in which the estate of Sea to Lake. The message coming from Rome could therefore not be clearer and has the current president as its privileged recipient.
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