Bishop Skylstad elected president of U.S. bishops' conference

By Jerry Filteau
Catholic News Service

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Nov. 15 elected Bishop William S. Skylstad of Spokane, Wash., as USCCB president for the next three years.

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At the end of the bishops' Nov. 15-18 meeting in Washington, he succeeds Bishop Wilton D. Gregory of Belleville, Ill., who over the past three years guided the country's bishops through the crisis of clergy sexual abuse of minors, widely regarded as the worst crisis facing the U.S. Catholic Church in its history.

Bishop Skylstad, 70, was vice president of the bishops' conference under Bishop Gregory.

He was elected from among 10 presidential nominees on the first ballot, receiving 120 votes out of 232 cast.

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Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago was elected vice president of the conference. Under conference rules, the remaining nine presidential candidates run for vice president; the cardinal was elected on the third ballot with 118 votes out of 230 cast.

The third ballot for vice president was a runoff between Cardinal George and Bishop Donald W. Wuerl of Pittsburgh, the other candidate who had received the highest number of votes in the second vice presidential ballot.

Cardinal George is the first cardinal to be elected president or vice president of the conference since 1971. Archbishop of Chicago since 1997, he was made a cardinal in 1998. He first became a bishop when he was named to head the Yakima Diocese. He then was head of the Portland Archdiocese from 1996 until his appointment to Chicago.

The new USCCB president has been a bishop since 1977, when he was installed as head the Diocese of Yakima, Wash. He was named to head the Spokane Diocese in March 1990.

Less than two weeks before his election, Bishop Skylstad announced, after a collapse of mediation efforts with clergy sexual abuse victims in the Spokane Diocese, that the diocese would enter Chapter 11 federal bankruptcy protection proceedings by Nov. 29 to deal as fairly as possible with all abuse victims.

That decision -- making Spokane the third U.S. diocese to announce bankruptcy proceedings, after Portland, Ore., and Tucson, Ariz. -- led to wide media speculation that Bishop Skylstad might withdraw from candidacy or not be elected, despite the bishops' usual practice of electing their vice president to the presidency.

An experienced ecumenist and articulator of Catholic social policy, Bishop Skylstad is also known for his outreach to Hispanic migrant farmworkers.

He has been Catholic co-chairman of the U.S. Catholic-Methodist theological dialogue and headed the U.S. bishops' Committee on Domestic Policy.

He was a key figure in the development of the 2001 environmental pastoral letter titled "The Columbia River Watershed: Caring for the Common Good," by 12 Catholic bishops of the U.S. Pacific Northwest and British Columbia, Canada.

Less than a month before the bishops' Nov. 15-18 meeting, he was one of the conveners of a major national Catholic scholars' conference on the environment, human dignity and the poor in Owatonna, Minn.

As chairman of the bishops' Committee on Domestic Policy in the late 1990s, he took strong stands opposing capital punishment, even in the case of Timothy McVeigh, who was convicted of the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building that killed 168 people.

"Our passions cry out for vengeance" against McVeigh, he said in 1997. "However, we as bishops believe that to execute Mr. McVeigh would tragically perpetuate a terrible cycle of violence and further diminish respect for life."

Under Bishop Skylstad, the domestic policy committee also issued statements supporting a higher minimum wage and opposing cutbacks in welfare benefits.

He headed a subcommittee of that committee which drafted guidelines for practices to be observed in Catholic-related hospitals where employees were trying to unionize. Those guidelines had a significant impact on labor relations in a number of Catholic hospitals in California.

The subcommittee's 1999 working paper, "A Fair and Just Workplace," recommended establishing an environment, free of pressure, intimidation, false information or misleading claims, in which workers can make an informed, free choice about whether to be represented by a union or not.

The subcommittee membership included bishops, union representatives, Catholic health administrators and women religious. In presenting the working paper, Bishop Skylstad expressed hope that it "may be a road map for avoiding future conflict" in Catholic health facilities.

During his term as co-chairman of the U.S. Catholic-Methodist Dialogue, the group issued a 64-page guide of dialogue themes, common prayer, Bible study and resources for joint activities for use by local Catholic and Methodist congregations.

Bishop Skylstad has been a supporter of getting local congregations involved in ecumenical dialogue so that people at the parish level can be "very up front and honest" about issues and obstacles to unity.

Bishop Skylstad was born March 2, 1934, in Omak, Wash. He graduated from the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio, and was ordained to the priesthood in 1960 for the Spokane Diocese.

Cardinal George elected bishops' conference vice president

When the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops elected Chicago's Cardinal Francis E. George as vice president Nov. 15, it was the first time in 33 years that a cardinal has been selected as one of the conference's two top officers.

Cardinal George, 67, has been archbishop of Chicago since 1997 and a cardinal since 1998.

Every third year the bishops elect a new USCCB president and vice president from a slate of 10 nominees. A simple majority is needed for election.

Bishop William S. Skylstad of Spokane, Wash., vice president for the past three years, was easily elected president, winning 52 percent of the vote on the first ballot. Cardinal George came in second with 23 percent, with the remaining quarter of the votes spread among the other eight candidates.

The bishops then turned to the vice presidential election, choosing from among the remaining candidates. In the first ballot, out of 232 votes Cardinal George got 83, or 36 percent, and Bishop Donald W. Wuerl picked up 66, or 28 percent. Bishop Gerald F. Kicanas of Tucson, Ariz., was a distant third with 21.

On the second round of voting for vice president, Cardinal George moved up to 108 votes and Bishop Wuerl to 95. Between them they had 89 percent of the 228 votes cast.

Following USCCB rules, the third ballot was a runoff between the two candidates with the most votes in round two. Of 230 bishops who voted in the final ballot, 118 voted for Cardinal George and 112 for Bishop Wuerl.

Long active in conference affairs, Cardinal George has been chairman of the USCCB Committee on Liturgy for the past two years and is the USCCB representative to the episcopal board of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy.

At the time of his election he was also serving as a consultant to the doctrine, migration and pro-life activities committees and the lay ministry subcommittee and as a member of the Administrative Committee and the Ad Hoc Committee on Shrines.

A Chicago native, he joined the Oblates of Mary Immaculate in 1957 and was ordained a priest of that order in 1963.

He earned a master's degree in philosophy at The Catholic University of America in Washington in 1965 and a doctorate at Tulane University in New Orleans in 1970. He taught philosophy at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb., before he was elected provincial of the Oblates' central U.S. province in 1973.

Named vicar general of his order worldwide, he served in Rome and while there he also earned a doctorate in theology. On his return to the United States he headed the Cambridge Center for the Study of Faith and Culture until 1990, when he was named bishop of Yakima, Wash. In 1996 he was named archbishop of Portland, Ore., and the following year was made archbishop of Chicago.

By being elected vice president of the USCCB, he succeeds Bishop Skylstad for the second time: His appointment to Yakima in 1990 followed Bishop Skylstad's transfer from that diocese to Spokane.

Since the bishops' conference was established in its modern form in 1966, only two cardinals have been elected to the two top conference offices. That occurred in 1971 when Cardinal John J. Krol of Philadelphia was elected president and Cardinal John J. Carberry of St. Louis was elected vice president. Three years later Cardinal Carberry did not run for president because he was too close to retirement age to complete a three-year term.

National Catholic Reporter, November 15, 2004