Bishop Roger Morin of New Orleans has been named bishop of Biloxi, the Vatican announced this morning. Morin, who turns 68 on Saturday, currently serves as vicar general, or second-in-command to Archbishop Alfred Hughes.
He will be installed in Biloxi on April 27, that diocese said in a statement this morning.
A bishop since 2003, Morin served his entire 38-year career in New Orleans, much of that time supervising anti-poverty programs.
A native of Dracut, Massachusetts, Morin came to New Orleans as a seminarian in the summer of 1967 to work with the city's poor at the invitation of Archbishop Philip Hannan.
He returned the following year, was ordained here and began a career in anti-poverty work. From 1978 to 1981 the Archdiocese of New Orleans loaned him to City Hall to do community development work in Mayor Dutch Morial's administration.
Before becoming a bishop in 2003, Morin ran the department in the Archdiocese of New Orleans responsible for the church's sprawling housing, counseling, food-assistance and other anti-poverty programs. He holds a masters degree in urban studies at Tulane University
Morin was the key archdiocesan planner behind Pope John Paul II's 1987 visit to New Orleans and the archdiocese's bicentennial in1993.
More recently, he was an important figure in the development and execution of Hughes' controversial plan to close or realign almost three dozen Catholic parishes after Hurricane Katrina.
Morin will become the third bishop of Biloxi, a diocese created in 1977. Like New Orleans, it has been dedicated to rebuilding after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The diocese consists of 17 counties in Southern Mississippi.
In a region where less than 10 percent of the population is Catholic, its 68,000 Catholics make it about sixth the size of the Archdiocese of New Orleans.
In Biloxi, Morin will replace another New Orleanian, Bishop Thomas Rodi, who was named Archbishop of Mobile last spring.
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(Source: RCGN)