As a young man discerning a call to the priesthood in the late 1980s, Ronald Hicks took a year off from the seminary with the goal of learning Spanish.
He volunteered in an orphanage, Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos (“Our Little Brothers”) in Central Mexico, and from that moment on, “his connection to the poor and his priestly vocation grew together,” according to the Catholic Extension Society.
Ordained a priest in 1994
“He reentered the seminary and was ordained a priest in 1994, recalling that he couldn’t stop smiling that day.”
Chicago-based Catholic Extension posted a profile on now-Archbishop Hicks on its website. The prelate joined the organization’s board of governors in 2022 at the invitation of its president, Father Jack Wall. He has helped it build up the Church’s presence among the poor and in the poorest regions of the country — which has been Catholic Extension’s mission since its founding in 1905.
The profile urged the faithful to get to know the 58-year-old man appointed by Pope Leo XIV to lead 2.5 million Catholics as the new shepherd of the Archdiocese of New York, succeeding Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan.
‘Driven by a sense of duty’
“New Yorkers will appreciate that he is driven by a sense of duty that fuels his remarkable work ethic,” it said. “He remains grounded by his tight-knit family, including his brother, his parents — both still living — and his extended family. All of them have stayed very connected to his ministry over the years.”
Of special note, the future archbishop and the future pope grew up in neighboring suburbs on Chicago’s South Side.
At a news conference Dec. 18, the day his appointment was announced, the former bishop of Joliet, Illinois, and former auxiliary of Chicago said he was raised “in the South suburbs of Chicago and South Holland,” and Pope Leo was raised in the neighboring suburb of Dolton. Their houses “were literally 14 blocks away from each other,” Archbishop Hicks added.
Served parishes throughout archdiocese
After his ordination as a priest for the Archdiocese of Chicago, then-Father Hicks served in parishes throughout the archdiocese. Later, he assisted in the archdiocese’s education of seminarians, eventually becoming dean of formation at Mundelein Seminary.
“One of things he modeled to the seminarians was that a diocesan priest’s vocation is formed not only in a book or in a classroom, but also by the people he serves and grows to love,” Catholic Extension said in its profile.
“Perhaps that is why in between stints at Mundelein he went back to Latin America for five years to reunite with the community that helped forge his priestly vocation,” it added.
Five years in El Salvador
In July 2005, with permission from Cardinal Francis E. George, then archbishop of Chicago, Archbishop Hicks moved from Chicago to El Salvador to begin a five-year term as regional director of Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos, or NPH, in Central America.
NPH is a home dedicated to caring for more than 3,400 orphaned and abandoned children in nine Latin American and Caribbean countries.
“His time in El Salvador was an influential period,” Catholic Extension said. When he became a bishop in 2018, ordained as a Chicago auxiliary, it noted, he included a sprig of rosemary in the middle of his coat of arms in homage to El Salvador’s St. Óscar Romero, whose last name translates into English as “rosemary.”
The archbishop of San Salvador, St. Romero, “was martyred in 1980 for his defense of the voiceless.”
Prioritizes ‘the least of God’s people’
The rosemary “signals that Hicks, too, wants to be a bishop that prioritizes the least of God’s people, no matter the importance of his day-to-day duties,” Catholic Extension said.
In a 2022 interview with reporter Rhina Guidos of Catholic News Service, then-Bishop Hicks said that anytime people visited him in El Salvador, he would take them to the “holy sites” — what he calls the places where priests, religious men or women, and laity were brutalized before and during the country’s civil war from 1980 to 1992.
During that time, he came to know of the life of St. Romero, who “quickly became one of my heroes,” and of the life of the country, particularly for the poor, during the war, he said.
Learned lessons in hope and faith
“If I learned any lessons, it was mostly to not lose hope, to have faith, to never give up and to realize through everything, through the good and the bad, that we are not abandoned: God is with us,” he told CNS.
The bishop spoke to CNS in El Salvador. He was there for the beatifications that January of four martyrs: Franciscan Father Cosme Spessotto; Jesuit Father Rutilio Grande, who was martyred along with Manuel Solórzano, a sacristan in his 70s; and Nelson Rutilio Lemus, a boy in his teens.
“If we are truly followers of Jesus, then their beatification gives us a direct example of what it looks like to love without counting the costs,” he said.
Returned ‘an even stronger priest’
He “came back from El Salvador an even stronger priest,” Catholic Extension’s profile said.
The day before his Feb. 6 installation, Archbishop Hicks told reporters, “I left my heart there in Central America.”
The archbishop “speaks Spanish effortlessly when in Latino parishes and out in the community,” said Catholic Extension, which also noted that he “is a masterful preacher, with homilies that reflect his relatability as a human being and man of faith.”
When he returned to Chicago from El Salvador, Cardinal George appointed him dean of formation at Mundelein.
Vicar general to bishop
Four years later, now-Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, Cardinal George’s successor, named him vicar general. In September 2018, the cardinal ordained him as an auxiliary bishop for the archdiocese. In September 2020, then-Bishop Hicks was installed to head the Diocese of Joliet, where he has served more than half a million Catholics.
“But his vocation as bishop was never separated from his foundational belief that a priest is shaped by his people,” Catholic Extension said.
With his Feb. 6 installation, “he steps into a massive new role leading 2.5 million Catholics in New York,” but “he will be a man grounded by his love of God, the poor and the people he serves,” it said.