New York News

From Harvey, Illinois, to the Archbishop of New York

February 4, 2026
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Archbishop Ronald A. Hicks, pictured in an undated portrait, is the newly appointed archbishop of New York. On Dec. 18, 2025, Pope Leo XIV accepted the resignation of New York Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, and and named then-Bishop Hicks of Joliet, Ill., as his successor.

Archbishop Ronald Hicks will soon be the shepherd of the Archdiocese of New York.  

Before his appointment to the Big Apple, Archbishop Hicks, 58, spent most of his life in Illinois, including as a priest. Most recently, he led the Diocese of Joliet and before that served as an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Chicago.  

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Currently, he also leads the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Committee on Clergy, Consecrated Life and Vocations, which is tasked with addressing issues related to the life and ministry of bishops, according to the USCCB. 

Born on Aug. 4, 1967, in Harvey, Illinois, to a Catholic family, Archbishop Hicks grew up one suburb over from Dolton, where Pope Leo XIV grew up.  

“We grew up literally in the same radius, in the same neighborhood together,” Archbishop Hicks said at his introductory press conference in December. “We played in the same parks, went swimming in the same pools, like the same pizza places.”  

Archbishop Hicks attended Catholic grade school and graduated from Quigley Preparatory Seminary South in 1985.  

Following preparatory seminary, Archbishop Hicks received a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Niles College of Loyola University in Chicago in 1989, and both his Master of Divinity degree in 1994 and his Doctor of Ministry degree in 2003 from the University of St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein, Illinois.  

He was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Chicago in 1994. He served multiple pastoral roles at parishes in the archdiocese until 1999, when he was appointed dean of formation at St. Joseph College Seminary in Chicago.  

In 2005, Archbishop Hicks moved from Chicago to El Salvador to serve as regional director of Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos, which cares for more than 3,400 orphaned and abandoned children in nine Latin American and Caribbean countries.  

He returned to Chicago in 2010 and served for four years as the dean of formation at Mundelein Seminary. Then, in 2015, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago appointed Archbishop Hicks as vicar general for the archdiocese, and he was subsequently appointed auxiliary bishop in 2018. He was then appointed to the Diocese of Joliet in 2020, where he remained until his appointment and installation as Archbishop of the Archdiocese of New York.