By PAUL LIKOUDIS
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Pope Francis has named Bishop Salvatore Matano, bishop of Burlington, Vt., as bishop of the Diocese of Rochester, N.Y.
Bishop Matano succeeds Bishop Matthew Clark, who retired in September 2012. Matano’s installation date is set for January 3, 2014.
The appointment was announced November 6, by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, apostolic nuncio to the United States.
That same day, at a press conference in Rochester, his first time in the city, Bishop Matano said his first priority is to encourage fallen-away Catholics to return to Mass.
Since 2000, Mass attendance has dropped by more than 30 percent; in some parishes by more than 40 percent.
According to Rocco Palmo, the “Church insider” who blogs at whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com, there was speculation that Matano would be appointed to Hartford, Conn., or even to a curial post due to his legal acumen.
In addition, wrote Palmo: “While Rochester under Clark had been an outlier among Northeastern dioceses in its normative embrace of a progressive postconciliar ecclesiology, as was universally expected, the incoming bishop comes from a rather different cloth…so much so that Matano was believed to be a favored choice of his Roman classmate, now-Cardinal Raymond Burke, to replace Burke in St. Louis on his 2008 transfer to Rome as prefect of the Apostolic Signatura.
“Accordingly, much like [the previous] week’s appointment of Bishop Leonard Blair to the archbishopric of Hartford, the choice of a fairly conservative figure with an extensive background in law and administration will be seen in some quarters as a clash with the prevailing ‘Francis narrative’ in the wider discourse.”
Matano, at age 67, will have eight years to try to revive a diocese that is largely moribund after 33 years of misrule by Bishop Matthew Clark, a prelate who was unabashed in his support for women’s ordination and of theologians who dissented from Church teaching on marriage ethics.
Inevitably, clashes will arise as Matano, a solidly orthodox theologian, will have to confront the theological dissidents resident at Clark’s theologate, St. Bernard’s Institute, headed by Sr. Patricia Schoelles, and as well as a host of radical feminists who run some two dozen parishes.
Salvatore Ronald Matano was born September 15, 1946 in Providence, R.I. He attended St. Ann Elementary and La Salle Academy in Providence. He entered Our Lady of Providence Seminary in Providence and studied theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, where he also earned a doctorate in canon law in 1983. He was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Providence on December 17, 1971, in St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome.
Following Ordination, he served as parochial vicar of Our Lady of Grace Parish in Johnston, R.I., and as a teacher at Our Lady of Providence Seminary High School. He served as director of the Priests’ Personnel Office and assistant chancellor of the Diocese of Providence from 1977-1980 and later as co-chancellor, from 1983-1991. From 1991-1992 he served at the apostolic nunciature in Washington and from 1992-1997 as vicar general of the Diocese of Providence. He was named a protonotary apostolic with a title of monsignor on January 17, 1993.
He served as pastor of St. Sebastian Parish in Providence and professor at Providence College of the Dominican Fathers from 1997-2000, before returning to the apostolic nunciature. Pope John Paul II appointed his coadjutor bishop of Burlington on March 3, 2005. He was ordained a bishop on April 19 of that year and succeeded Bishop Kenneth Angell as bishop of Burlington on November 9.
Bishop Clark served as bishop of Rochester from 1979-2012. A native of Troy, N.Y., he was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Albany, N.Y., in 1962. He served in parish and chancery assignments in Albany and as a spiritual director at North American College, Rome, from 1972-1979, when he was named bishop of Rochester.
The Diocese of Rochester is comprised of 12 counties in the state of New York. It covers 7,107 square miles and has a population of 1,512,046, of which 311,427, or 21 percent, are Catholic, about one-fifth of which attend Mass weekly, the lowest percentage in the United States.
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