BALTIMORE—At the 2018 General Assembly in Baltimore this past November, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) elected Archbishop Leonard P. Blair, Archdiocese of Hartford, CT, as chairman-elect of the Committee on Divine Worship in a 132 to 113 vote over Bishop David L. Ricken, Diocese of Green Bay, WI.
Archbishop Blair was born in Detroit on April 12, 1949, and was ordained to the priesthood for the Archdiocese of Detroit on June 26, 1976, after studies at Sacred Heart Seminary College, Detroit; the North American College, Rome; and the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome. Archbishop Blair holds a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in History from Sacred Heart Seminary College; a Bachelor of Sacred Theology (S.T.B.) from the Pontifical Gregorian University; a Licentiate in Theology (S.T.L.) with a specialization in Patristics and the History of Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University; and a Doctorate in Theology (S.T.D.) from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum), Rome.
He held various pastoral assignments for the Archdiocese of Detroit and various academic and curial assignments, including instructor of Church History and Patristics at St. John’s Provincial Seminary, Plymouth, MI, and Dean of studies and Assistant Professor of Theology at Sacred Heart in Detroit. He also served in Rome in the Vatican Secretariat of State and the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See as secretary to Cardinal Edmund Szoka. He was ordained auxiliary bishop of Detroit on August 24, 1999; installed as seventh bishop of Toledo, OH on December 4, 2003; and installed as fifth archbishop of Hartford on December 6, 2013.
