The Most Rev. James D. Conley converted to Catholicism while an undergraduate at the University of Kansas in the 1970s. Early in his priesthood, he was pastor of the student parish on the Wichita State University campus.
He later served as chaplain to the University of Dallas Rome Campus, played a role in founding the Wyoming Catholic College in Lander, Wyo., and has taught theology on several campuses. He has worked with the founder of the Denver-based Fellowship of Catholic University Students or FOCUS, which sends young people as missionaries to college campuses.
He even speaks their language, using social media such as Twitter and Facebook.
“He's great with college-age kids,” said the Rev. Joseph Taphorn, moderator of the curia for the Omaha Archdiocese. “He's a great teacher. He's very warm and friendly.”
Taphorn knows because he got to know Conley, then in Wichita, during his own student years at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kan. Both were involved in the anti-abortion movement.
Logan Burda, a FOCUS missionary at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, has seen Conley in action more recently, both at Friday's press conference announcing the appointment and two years ago at a conference in Denver. Conley was one of the bishops who celebrated Mass at the conference, attended by a large group of UNL students.
“He gave a terrific homily, and he was well-liked by us,” said Burda, a UNL graduate who has been posted there for four years.
Burda said he and other young missionaries love Lincoln Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz and will be sad to see him retire. But they are excited at Conley's appointment.
He and others in the Lincoln Diocese aren't likely to see major shifts.
Conley on Friday pledged to retain the policies that have typified the southern Nebraska diocese.
Under Bruskewitz, the Lincoln Diocese has retained many traditional church practices, such as barring girls from being altar servers, and has been a national leader in recruiting seminarians to the priesthood.
“I've always held the Lincoln Diocese in high regard,” Conley said at Friday's press conference. “I'm not going to mess around with that.”
Conley, 57, a native of Overland Park, Kan., currently is the auxiliary bishop of Denver.
Bruskewitz, 77, has built a reputation for eschewing some practices of other dioceses but also for one of the highest rates in the nation for recruiting new priests and nuns.
A 2006 study by Catholic World Report cited the Diocese of Lincoln as having the highest per-capita number of seminarians in the country.
The Lincoln Diocese, though, is one of only a couple in the nation that have refused to participate in a voluntary annual audit of diocesan policies against child sexual abuse requested by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Conley, who has known Bruskewitz for about 16 years, called him “a true champion of the Catholic faith” and “a true hero of mine.”
“I've got big shoes to fill,” he said.
Bruskewitz was installed as bishop 20 years ago. Conley will become the ninth bishop of Lincoln on Nov. 20.
Conley said that he was not particularly religious while in college — which he noted is unfortunately common at that age — but that he discovered the “truth, goodness and beauty” of the Catholic Church during a class on the great books of Christian authors.
In an interview published last fall in a Catholic magazine, he noted that he'd been raised in the Presbyterian Church.
As a convert, he said Friday, he has “a great heart for evangelization” and looks forward to working with young people.
At Friday's press conference, Conley elicited several rounds of laughter, particularly when he pledged to remain a “Jayhawk basketball fan” but to embrace Nebraska football.
He said that young people today are on “a great search and desire for the truth” and that “relativism is a dead end” that doesn't provide such answers.
Relativism is defined in the Catholic Church as denial of the existence of absolute values.
Bruskewitz, too, has spoken about preserving the “undistorted” Catholic faith.
Bruskewitz said that Conley was a “wonderful personal friend for many years” and that he was overwhelmed with joy by Friday's announcement.
Conley also will be familiar to some other Lincoln priests. He noted that he had attended seminary with several.
Greg Schleppenbach of the Nebraska Catholic Conference in Lincoln said people he knows are very pleased with the announcement.
“His focus on young people, based on his own conversion to Catholicism in his college years, is encouraging to many of us,” he said.
Schleppenbach said he was particularly pleased with Conley's experience in the anti-abortion cause, given his own work in that area. Conley served as director of the Wichita Diocese's Respect Life office.
In a statement Friday, Omaha Archbishop George Lucas said he was delighted to learn of Conley's appointment, saying he looked forward to welcoming him to Nebraska and to collaborating with him.
“The priests and people of the Diocese of Lincoln will find Bishop Conley to be a wise teacher, a faithful shepherd and a loving father,” Lucas said.