Bishop Kevin W. Vann of Fort Worth, Texas has been named the fourth bishop of Orange, Calif. by Pope Benedict XVI.Bishop Vann will succeed Bishop Tod D. Brown, who offered his resignation to Pope Benedict earlier this year upon reaching the age limit of 75.
The appointment and resignation were both announced Sept. 21 in Washington, D.C. by Archbishop Carlo M. Vigano, apostolic nuncio to the United States.
Bishop Vann will shepherd the nation’s tenth largest and fastest growing diocese.
The diocese’s total population is 3.2 million, of whom 41 percent, or 1.3 million, are Catholic.
Bishop Brown recently purchased the famous Crystal Cathedral from an evangelical church, and it will become the cathedral and chancery of Orange as Christ Cathedral.
Bishop Vann will be introduced to the diocese at 11:30 local time this morning at the Marywood Pastoral Center. He will be assisted in his governance of the diocese by Bishop Dominic M. Luong, who has been auxiliary in Orange since 2003.
Bishop Vann was born in Springfield, Ill. in 1951 and was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Springfield in 1981.
He earned a doctorate in canon law from the Angelicum in 1985, and subsequently served as both a pastor and on the tribunal of the diocese. He was named coadjutor bishop of Fort Worth in 2005, and assumed the helm later that year.
Bishop Brown was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Monterey-Fresno in 1963 and has been Bishop of Orange for 14 years.
Archbishop Vigano also made public that Pope Benedict accepted the resignation of Bishop Matthew H. Clark of the Rochester diocese, who also became 75 this year.
The Rochester diocese will be led by an apostolic administrator, Bishop Robert J. Cunnningham of Syracuse, until the Pope appoints a new bishop.