Pope names Vatican official head of U.S. Anglican ordinariate

After consultation with the governing council of the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, Pope Francis named Msgr. Steven J. Lopes to be the first bishop of the ordinariate, which serves former Anglicans living in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church.

The appointment of Bishop-designate Lopes, 40, was announced by the Vatican Nov. 24 along with the announcement that Pope Francis had accepted the resignation of Msgr. Jeffrey N. Steenson, 63, who had led the ordinariate since its establishment by Pope Benedict XVI Jan. 1, 2012.

"This is the happy outcome of much careful consultation with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to whom I first made this request almost a year ago," Steenson said in a statement posted on the ordinariate's website. "I welcome this news with all my heart, for the ordinariate has now progressed to the point where a bishop is much needed for our life and mission."

The personal ordinariate, similar to a diocese, serves parishes in the United States and Canada. Its offices are in Houston, Texas.

Steenson was ineligible to become a bishop because he is married. After 28 years of ministry in the Church of England and in the Episcopal Church in the United States, he and his wife were received into the Catholic Church in 2007. He was ordained a Roman Catholic priest two years later.

Lopes, who was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of San Francisco in 2001, has worked at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith since 2005. And since 2012 he has served as secretary of the Vatican's "Anglicanae Traditiones" commission, which was responsible for developing "Divine Worship," the new missal for use in the personal ordinariates. The missal combines elements of the Catholic and Anglican liturgical traditions.

Although Lopes was not raised in the Anglican tradition, Steenson said he had worked so closely with former Anglicans and with the establishment of the ordinariates for them that "there is no one who knows better" the personal stories of those who joined the Catholic Church and the history of the creation of the ordinariates for Anglicans who wanted to enter into full communion with the Roman Catholic Church while maintaining elements of their Anglican heritage and liturgy.

Lopes was born April 22, 1975, in Fremont, California. He studied philosophy at the University of San Francisco and at Leopold-Franzens University in Innsbruck. He did his seminary studies at St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park, California, and in Rome at the Pontifical North American College. He holds a doctorate in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University.