From Chicago’s South Suburbs to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Bishop Ronald Hicks blends humility, heart, and a missionary’s zeal in his new role.
Newsroom (20/12/2025 Gaudium Press ) When Bishop Ronald Hicks begins a letter with the words “I love Jesus,” he doesn’t sound like a man trying to prove anything. He sounds like someone who simply means it. The phrase—unadorned, unpolished, and wholly genuine—opens “MAKE,” the pastoral letter he released in September as bishop of Joliet, and it captures much of what those who know him say defines his ministry: faith lived with quiet conviction.
“He’s just a really good person,” says the Rev. Burke Masters, pastor of St. Isaac Jogues in Hinsdale, Illinois, who has known Hicks for more than twenty years. “He practices what he preaches. He’s very humble.” Masters pauses, recalling their earliest work together in Chicago. “When he says, ‘I love Jesus, and I love my neighbor,’ it’s not rhetoric—it’s who he is.”
From South Holland to the World
Hicks’s story begins in South Holland, Illinois, a modest suburb just across the city’s southern border. It’s the kind of place that still waves from porches and remembers your name at the local diner—a place that formed both his faith and his style. Only a few miles away, in Dolton, another South Side Catholic—now Pope Leo XIV—was growing up. The parallels between the two men would later shape the trajectory of Hicks’s life and pastoral outlook.
Like Pope Leo, Hicks was marked early by service in Latin America. His years in El Salvador, working with orphaned children at Nuestros Pequeños Hermanos between 2005 and 2010, left a permanent impression: the sound of hymns sung in open-air chapels, the faces of kids who called him Padre Ronald, the realization that pastoral care meant presence before program. It is there, friends say, that Hicks learned to preach less with words and more with listening.
Kevin Yonkers‑Talz, a Jesuit based in the Bronx, first met him celebrating Mass with those children. “He was very warm and hospitable,” Yonkers‑Talz recalls. “He was engaged, personable. What struck me was his humility and warmth.” That same simplicity, he says, now gives him “a lot of hope for New York City.”
Beyond Categories
For those trying to neatly categorize the incoming archbishop—progressive or traditionalist, political or apolitical—the answers don’t fit easily. Hicks permitted the Traditional Latin Mass to continue in Joliet while also signing a letter opposing the denial of Communion to pro-choice Catholic politicians. His ministry, say those who know him, lives comfortably in the tension of the both‑and: faithful to tradition yet attentive to the marginalized.
“He’s not interested in the culture wars,” says Rev. Peter Wojcik, pastor of St. Clement Church in Chicago. “He doesn’t have social media accounts. That’s just not his thing. His thing is the word of the Gospel.” As vicar general under Cardinal Blase Cupich, Hicks helped guide the Chicago Archdiocese through difficult administrative reforms—work that required equal parts diplomacy and compassion. “He’s a master listener,” Wojcik adds. “With him, respect comes naturally. You can demand obedience, but you can’t demand respect.”
Hicks’s ability to navigate complexity with steadiness has become part of his reputation—a man capable of leading without spectacle, listening without retreat, and building bridges without slogans. It’s a quality that distinguishes him from his predecessor in New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, whose booming laugh and camera-ready demeanor made him one of American Catholicism’s most recognizable faces. If Dolan embodied the Church’s public square, Hicks may represent its kitchen table.
“On Fire with Love for Jesus”
“This is how the Church will be renewed,” Hicks wrote in “MAKE.” “Not by treating the Church like a club, and not by clinging to the status quo, but by being on fire with love for Jesus.”
The letter outlines his fourfold vision—conversion, confession, communion, and commission—a progression that begins within the heart and moves outward into mission. In Joliet, he challenged parishes to rekindle the basics: catechize, evangelize, and put faith into action. It’s a blueprint rooted in movement, not maintenance.
“He’s so approachable,” says Father Masters. “From the beginning, he made it clear: We’re here to form disciples, to get people out into the world.” Parishioners across Joliet echo the same theme—his friendliness, his availability, his knack for transforming meetings into conversations about Jesus rather than logistics.
A Church and a Moment
The timing of Hicks’s appointment reflects the Church’s gradual transition under Pope Leo XIV, who, like his Chicago compatriot, favors pastoral closeness over political combat. For the Vatican, New York remains the nation’s most visible Catholic platform—a place where every homily lives under a spotlight. Hicks, 58, arrives as a reform-era bishop who sees leadership as caretaking, not performance.
Observers point out that the appointment also carries the imprint of Cardinal Cupich, whose recommendation likely advanced Hicks’s name to Rome. But the fit feels organic: Hicks is a Chicago priest to the core—formed by the seminary at Mundelein, elevated by Pope Francis, and now appointed by a pope who shares his home soil and sense of faith as service.
New York’s 2.5 million Catholics—spread from the Bronx to the Hudson Valley—may find in him a quieter kind of leader, one who prefers coffee to microphones, parish halls to press rooms. “He deeply cares for immigrants,” Wojcik says. “He knows them by name and story.” For a city built on both, that might be his most important credential.
The Humble Thread
There’s an almost pastoral irony in watching Hicks—a Cubs fan raised in the flatlands of Illinois—ascend to shepherd a city of spires and subways. Yet those who know him say the geography doesn’t faze him. His sense of place has always been more spiritual than physical. Wherever he goes, his first instinct seems to be the same: listen.
And perhaps that is what the Church needs most from its leaders right now—not a headline-maker, but a listener. Someone who still believes “I love Jesus” can begin a conversation worth having.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from America Magazine
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