Who is Bishop Henning? What to know about Cardinal O'Malley's successor
Katie Landeck
After just over a year as the bishop of Providence, Pope Francis has appointed Bishop Richard G. Henning at the Archbishop of Boston.
Henning will take over for Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, 80, who served as the bishop of Fall River from 1992 to 2002 and was appointed as the archbishop of Boston on July 1, 2003. Three years later, he was elevated by Pope Benedict XVI to cardinal. Pope Francis selected Cardinal O’Malley as the only North American member of his Council of Cardinal Advisors.
Cardinal O'Malley was well-known, in part because he kept a personal blog, cardinalseansblog.org, which he's updated weekly for years.
Henning, with his short tenure in New England, is less known. Here's what to know about him.
Where is Bishop Henning from?
Henning was born in Rockville Centre, New York, in 1964 to Richard and Maureen Henning, the first of five siblings. He grew up in Valley Stream and attended Chaminade High School in Mineola, New York.
He studied Licentiates in Biblical Theology at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., and University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome, according to his biography.
Before coming to Rhode Island, he was the auxiliary bishop for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre, which covers Long Island and has about 154 parishes for a population of more than 1.5 million Catholics. It was also his home dioceses, "a place where I knew everyone and everything," Henning told The Providence Journal last year.
Does Bishop Henning speak Spanish?
Henning is fluent in Spanish, as well as Italian. He is able to read French, Greek and Hebrew.
When he was ordained in 1992, he first served for five years as an associate pastor at the Church of St. Peter of Alcantara, Port Washington. That assignment included serving a large population of El Salvador immigrants, migrants who had fled the bloody and lengthy civil war, where they had seen Catholic leaders such as Archbishop Oscar Romero assassinated and the deaths of “lay men and women who had stood up for the oppressed in the face of violence and mistreatment.”
“It was a community that had suffered a lot … that was stressed and poor and traumatized and yet full of joy and family and faith,” Henning told The Providence Journal in 2023. “It was so formative for me.”
To better serve them, he learned to speak Spanish.
So four days a week, a group of four women from this community tutored him, each taking one afternoon a week. Then on Saturdays, he would attend their prayer group meeting and just sit in the back and listen. This went on for a year, until he could preach and hear confessions in Spanish.
Why did Henning choose the priesthood?
Henning knew in 5th grade that he wanted to be a priest.
At the time, he was attending a Catholic grammar school in suburban Valley Stream, New York. He recalled in a press conference last year that a priest visited to speak about vocations, and afterward he had turned to a classmate and said, "I think I want to a be a priest."
Henning's father worked as a firefighter and his mother was a nurse who later become a homemaker, he said.
"Really, my vocation was born in the home with my parents," he said. "Both chose paths in life that were devoted to others."
What's Bishop Henning's views of gay marriage?
In April 2023, Bishop Henning told The Providence Journal that same-sex marriage “doesn’t work in Catholic theology.”
“The sacrament of marriage has always been theologically linked to procreation,” he said. “Culture has basically defined marriage in terms of affection between two people. It’s about how you feel about the other person. That’s what defines marriage. But for us, marriage was never actually only about the two people. That was a key element of it ... but for us, that’s only ever been one dimension of marriage. Ultimately, the gift of marriage is about a participation in God’s life and the power of the conception and the raising and educating of a child. The idea of expanding marriage beyond that doesn’t work in Catholic theology.“
“That doesn’t mean that the church hates people who have same-sex attraction,” he continued. “That doesn’t mean that they’re somehow evil or anything like that, right? All of us are sinners, in fact, in need of grace. I certainly am. It’s not a condemnation to say we can’t do that. … I do understand the argument that that somehow marginalizes or makes people feel that they’re rejected, but that’s certainly not the intention.”
Every life, he said, is sacred and deserving of dignity.
What's Bishop Henning's views on abortion?
On the subject of abortion, Henning told The Providence Journal in April 2023 again that believes that all lives are sacred and deserving of dignity.
“The question I always have to ask is, if the child in the womb is not human, then what is it?” he said. “There’s a truth here that needs space at the table, too, and for us, as Catholics, it’s really important that we keep standing up for that, and I will certainly do that.
“Now, I know that in Rhode Island the laws are going to be highly permissive. It occurs to me, though, why in Rhode Island can’t we give women a genuine choice?” he said, speaking directly of the state he had just moved to. “We do our best to help women have their baby, if that’s what they wish, and we have limited resources to do that. I wonder why, in a state that strikes me as so human and so welcoming, there isn’t more room in our hearts for the most vulnerable among us?”
These concerns, he said at the time, also apply to assisted suicide and cloning and gene editing, which all raise questions about “how we understand human dignity.”
“As much as people may be angry or disagree with the church, I wish they could find it in their hearts to at least say, ‘Well, it’s a voice that needs to be heard in the debate,'” he said. “And certainly, whether people want to hear us or not, we will be speaking that voice.”
Bishop Henning has a Labrador retriever, Agnes (named after St. Agnes, the patroness of the Diocese of Rockville Center on Long Island). He likes to pray while walking her.
Antonia Noori Farzan contributed to this report.
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