Archbishop-designate Golka, 59, is currently the bishop of Colorado Springs and will succeed Archbishop Samuel Aquila, whose canonically mandatory resignation was submitted upon his 75th birthday last September and has now been accepted by the American pontiff.
Archbishop-designate Golka was born September 22, 1966, in Grand Island, Nebraska and is the fourth of 10 children. After graduating from Grand Island Central Catholic High School, he attended Creighton University in Omaha, where he studied philosophy and theology.
He received a Master of Divinity and a Master of Arts in Sacramental Theology from St. Paul Seminary in Minnesota and was ordained to the priesthood of Jesus Christ for the Diocese of Grand Island on June 3, 1994.
He served in various parish assignments and other capacities, including vicar general and pastor of the Cathedral of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary just before being named Bishop of Colorado Springs by Pope Francis in 2021.
A fluent Spanish speaker, Bishop Golka created a shrine in Colorado Springs dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mother of the Divine Redeemer and patroness of the diocese.
With the episcopal motto “Stewards of God’s Mysteries,” Bishop Golka also serves as Episcopal Moderator of the Diocesan Fiscal Management Conference. Having worked closely with stewardship organizations, he has been a popular speaker on the topic of stewardship among various audiences.
In 2024, Bishop Golka also released a pastoral letter for the Jubilee year titled “Christ Our Hope” in which he encouraged pastors “to make the Sacrament of Reconciliation available to the faithful as much as possible” and emphasized the need for ongoing personal conversion as a means of effective lay evangelization.
He also spoke to the importance of strengthening Catholic identity in Catholic schools, recalling the mission of these institutions as having their “origin in the person of Christ and its roots in the teachings of the Gospel.”
In regard to the fruitfulness of priestly vocations, an analysis published by Catholic World Report last November revealed above-average results in the Diocese of Colorado Springs, ranking them 71st of 176 Latin-rite dioceses in the United States in its ratio of seminarians to Catholics. The Archdiocese of Denver ranked 106th.
In 2021, Bishop Golka was a signatory to what many considered to be an exemplary letter issued by the Catholic bishops of Colorado whereby they helped broadly facilitate religious exemptions from COVID-19 “vaccine” mandates. They confirmed “the government should not impose medical interventions on an individual or group of persons,” and thus they would “support religious exemptions from any and all vaccine mandates.”
With Aquila and the other bishops of Colorado, Golka also informed Catholic legislators who voted for the state’s Reproductive Health Equity Act (RHEA) in 2022 that they were not to receive Holy Communion until they had contrition and received absolution through the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
The bill, which became law, eliminated any restrictions on abortion and allowed for the direct killing of preborn girls and boys up until the moment of birth. Homosexual Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed the legislation into law on Apri 4, 2022.
And in an open letter with his brother bishops in the state last year, Golka was also outspoken against so-called Coverage for Pregnancy-Related Services legislation, which sought to allocate a minimum of $1.5 million in taxpayer funds per year toward abortions. The bishops implored Polis to veto the bill, which he went on to sign on April 24, 2025.
Archbishop-designate Golka will be installed as Denver’s new archbishop during a solemn Mass on Wednesday, March 25. Upon his installation, Golka will assume pastoral responsibility for Colorado’s largest diocese and metropolitan see, which serves 600,000 Catholics in 148 parishes and 31 Catholic schools.