Pope Appoints Bishop George V. Murry as Bishop of Youngstown
WASHINGTON (January 30, 2007)—Pope Benedict XVI has appointed Most Reverend George V. Murry, SJ, Bishop of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, as Bishop of Youngstown, Ohio.
Bishop Murry succeeds Most Reverend Thomas J. Tobin who was appointed Bishop of Providence, Rhode Island, March 31, 2005.
Archbishop Pietro Sambi, Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, announced the appointment.
George V. Murry was born December 28, 1948, in Camden, New Jersey. He attended Camden Catholic High School, St. Joseph's College, Philadelphia, St. Thomas Seminary, Bloomfield, Connecticut, and St. Mary's Seminary, Baltimore, where he received a B.A. in Philosophy in 1972. In that same year he entered the Society of Jesus.
He earned a Master in Divinity degree at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley in 1979 and a doctorate in American Cultural Studies at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., in 1994.
Bishop Murry served on the faculty and was dean of student activities at Gonzaga College High School, Washington, D.C., from 1974 to 1976.
He was ordained for the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus on June 9, 1979.
Bishop Murry was assistant professor of American Studies, Georgetown University, 1986-1990, and President, Archbishop Carroll High School, Washington, D.C., from 1989 to 1994. He was named Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs at the University of Detroit-Mercy in 1994.
Bishop Murry was appointed Titular Bishop of Fuerteventura and Auxiliary Bishop of Chicago on January 24, 1995, and ordained March 20, 1995. He was appointed Coadjutor Bishop of St. Thomas on May 5, 1998, and succeeded to the see on June 30, 1999.
Established May 15, 1943, the Diocese of Youngstown comprises six counties in Northeast Ohio. It has a Catholic population of 239,960 out of a total population of 1,223,313.