Kurtz gets big vote of confidence

Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky, was elected the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) on Tuesday. Archbishop Kurtz, who had served as vice president of the conference for the past three years, was elected on the first ballot with 125 votes, 53 per cent of the total, at the bishops’ annual assembly in Baltimore.

In recent years, the bishops have needed three ballots to select a president, so the selection of Kurtz on the first ballot was seen as an overwhelming vote of confidence.

Archbishop Kurtz was born on 18 August 1946 in Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania. Ordained in 1972, he holds a master’s degree in Social Work. As a young priest, he directed social justice ministries in the Diocese of Allentown, Pennsylvania. In 1999, he was named bishop of Knoxville, Tennessee, and in 2007, he was promoted to the Archdiocese of Louisville.

Once the presidential contest was decided, the bishops went on to choose the vice president from the remaining nine candidates, electing Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Houston, Texas as vice president of the USCCB. After two ballots, when no one attained a majority, the third ballot consisted of only the top two candidates.

Philadelphia’s Archbishop Charles Chaput received 87 votes, but DiNardo secured 147. Three years ago, Archbishop Chaput also lost to Archbishop Kurtz in the election for vice president, by an almost identical margin.

In his address to the conference, outgoing president Cardinal Timothy Dolan told the gathering that we are living in “a new age of martyrs”. To applause from the bishops, he said it was vital to contact political leaders to urge them to make the protection of “at-risk Christians a foreign policy priority”.