New Orleans Auxiliary Bishop Roger Morin Named Bishop Of Biloxi, Mississippi
WASHINGTON—Pope Benedict XVI has named Bishop Roger P. Morin, 68, Auxiliary Bishop of New Orleans, as Bishop of Biloxi, Mississippi.
The appointment was announced in Washington, March 2, by Archbishop Pietro Sambi, apostolic nuncio to the United States.
Bishop Morin succeeds Bishop Thomas Rodi, who was named Archbishop of Mobile, Alabama, last April.
Roger Morin was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, March 7, 1941. He attended elementary and secondary schools in Dracut, Lowell, and Boston, Massachusetts, and started seminary studies at Boston’s Cardinal O’Connell and St. John’s Seminaries (1962-1968). He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy from St. John’s in 1966, and then pursued graduate studies in theology there. He continued seminary formation at Notre Dame Seminary of the New Orleans Archdiocese (1968-1970), where he earned a Master of Divinity degree in 1970. He earned a Master of Science degree in urban affairs from Tulane University in New Orleans in 1974.
Bishop Morin was ordained to the priesthood for the New Orleans Archdiocese on April 15, 1971, and named a monsignor in 1985. He was named an auxiliary bishop of New Orleans in 2003.
His ministry in the archdiocese included parish assignments and work as director of the Social Apostolate. From 1978-1981, at the request of the mayor of New Orleans and with permission of his archbishop, he served as a volunteer special assistant in the office of the mayor. In 1981 he was named Archdiocesan Vicar for Community Affairs and Parochial Vicar of Incarnate Word Parish, New Orleans. He was named pastor there in 1988. In 2001, he was named vicar general and moderator of the Archdiocesan Curia.
As a member of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Bishop Morin has served as chairman of the Subcommittee of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development and as a member of the Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development and the Committee on National Collections.
The Biloxi Diocese includes 9,653 square miles in 17 counties of southern Mississippi and has a population of 761,418 people, with 58,202, or eight percent, of them Catholic.