Discernment and careful decision-making are threads Bishop-elect Kevin Kenney has woven through his life.
“I don’t make decisions rapidly, it takes a while to discern,” he said during an introduction as bishop-elect July 25 at the Archdiocesan Catholic Center (ACC) in St. Paul.
That same morning, Pope Francis named Bishop-elect Kenney, 64 — pastor of St. Olaf, parochial administrator of Sts. Cyril and Methodius and chaplain at DeLaSalle High School, all in Minneapolis — as an auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese. The announcement came two months after Auxiliary Bishop Joseph Williams was appointed coadjutor bishop of the Diocese of Camden in New Jersey.
“To say yes to Pope Francis took a lot of discernment in my life, to be able to think and to feel that I could fulfill this role for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, as well as the universal Church,” Bishop-elect Kenney said to members of the archdiocese, including priests and religious, and local media gathered at the ACC. Bishop-elect Kenney addressed those gathered in both English and Spanish at different points in his remarks.
When he received word of his new role in late June, Bishop-elect Kenney joked, “One of my first responses to the nuncio (Cardinal Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the United States) was, ‘Do you really know how old I am?'”
Though Bishop-elect Kenney admitted he had been thinking about how he would spend his retirement prior to getting the call from Cardinal Pierre, he said he drew inspiration from his father, who, at the age of 70, worked as an evening security guard at Visitation School in Mendota Heights.
“So, I figure, well Dad, here we go,” Bishop-elect Kenney said of his stepping into a new role.
Calling his life “an adventure,” Bishop-elect Kenney reflected on growing up in “a family of good, Irish Catholics.” Born in 1959 to William and Dorothy Kenney, Bishop-elect Kenney grew up in Minneapolis as the fifth of eight children. He attended Annunciation Catholic School and DeLaSalle High School, both in Minneapolis.
He earned degrees in business administration and Spanish from the then-College of St. Thomas in St. Paul (now the University of St. Thomas), then moved to Chicago and became a lay volunteer with the Claretian Missionaries, a religious community of priests and brothers founded by St. Anthony Marie Claret.
Bishop-elect Kenney said he has been grateful for “the missionary aspect of my life,” referencing his time with the Claretians teaching English as a second language and working with youth on the south side of Chicago.
He became the director of the Claretian Lay Volunteers, leading that program for two years. He then entered formation to become a Claretian and attended the Catholic Theological Union (CTU) in Chicago to complete his studies for priestly ordination.
During his five years of formation with the Claretian Missionaries, Bishop-elect Kenney discerned a different call –– to diocesan priesthood –– and became a seminarian for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. While in formation at The St. Paul Seminary in St. Paul, he completed his Master of Divinity degree, with a world mission concentration, from CTU. On May 28, 1994, then-Archbishop John Roach ordained Father Kenney as an archdiocesan priest.
In his first assignment –– as parochial vicar of St. Olaf from 1994 to 1998 –– Bishop-elect Kenney also served the wider Minneapolis community, including those experiencing homelessness.
Through his various experiences working with underserved communities, Bishop-elect Kenney said, he has learned “to recognize the good, the beauty in everyone.”
“I learned, and I came to appreciate in many ways, just to be able to give someone a hug, to smile, to say, ‘Good morning, how are you today?’ … to encourage them, in one way or another, to be thankful for the life they have, but then (also) to try to offer them a little bit of hope that things will be better for them.”
In 1998, Bishop-elect Kenney was named pastor of Our Lady of Peace in south Minneapolis. After serving one six-year term, he transferred to Our Lady of Guadalupe in St. Paul, where he served a growing Latino community in the area from 2004 to 2015.
Meanwhile, he served as archdiocesan vicar for Latino Ministry from 2010 to 2018 and in 2013, helped reopen the archdiocesan Office of Latino Ministry. In 2015, Bishop-elect Kenney was named pastor of Divine Mercy in Faribault and St. Michael in Kenyon.
Bishop-elect Kenney returned to Minneapolis in 2019 to serve as pastor of St. Olaf and administrator at Sts. Cyril and Methodius — the latter parish originally served Slovak Catholics and now serves the Ecuadorean community in the Twin Cities.
In his current role as St. Olaf pastor, Bishop-elect Kenney said he appreciates “the diversity that we have at St. Olaf … people of many different cultures come to celebrate worship together, and the beauty of seeing all of us, all of us, be able to walk together and to lift each other up in challenging times.”
Serving the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has been “a great honor,” he said.
During his July 25 remarks at the ACC, Archbishop Bernard Hebda described Bishop-elect Kenney as “an extraordinary pastor; he’s a pastor with great compassion.”
“It’s wonderful that we are receiving an auxiliary bishop who already knows the archdiocese so well, who’s been involved in so many ministries, who certainly is going to be able to be that beating heart of a shepherd that we need in the work that God is calling us to do,” the archbishop said.
The archbishop also noted the importance of the announcement for the local Church.
“It’s really a tribute to our local Church, to our presbyterate, that the Holy Father (Pope Francis) would come once again to our archdiocese to find a successor of the Apostles and very appropriate that it would be announced on the feast of an Apostle, St. James.”
Bishop Williams and Auxiliary Bishop Michael Izen are both native Minnesotans who served as priests of the archdiocese. Bishop Andrew Cozzens of Crookston was also a priest and an auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese; Bishop Donald DeGrood of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, is a native of Faribault and Bishop Emeritus Richard Pates is a native of St. Paul who ministered as a priest and auxiliary bishop in the archdiocese. Other priests of the archdiocese named bishops since 2007 include Bishop Peter Christensen of Boise, Idaho, and the late Bishop Paul Sirba of Duluth.
Before leading those gathered at the ACC in opening prayer, Bishop Izen joked, “Someone asked me how it feels being the senior auxiliary and I said, ‘Right now, Bishop-elect Kenney is washing my car.’”
In prayer, Bishop Izen offered thanks to God for “the gift that Pope Francis has given us” in appointing Bishop-elect Kenney to his new role.
“Open his heart to all that you have in store for him in this next chapter of his ministry and bless all of us as we support him and love him,” Bishop Izen prayed.
Bishop-elect Kenney shared that his discernment and ultimate yes to the role of auxiliary bishop is a new way to partake in ministry.
“Every time I now pass a picture of Pope Francis, I thank him for the new and blessed adventure that is ahead,” he said in a statement announcing his new role. “I thought to myself, ‘I began as a missionary and now I will end as a missionary, going into the world in a new way, to proclaim and live the good news of Jesus Christ.’”
Bishop-elect Kenney’s episcopal ordination is scheduled for 1 p.m. Oct. 28 at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul. The ordination will also be livestreamed on the archdiocese’s Facebook page
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