Archbishop-designate Ronald Hicks answered questions at a press conference on Thursday, his first public appearance in New York City as he prepares to take over as its first new archbishop in 14 years. Watch his press conference in the player below. Hicks, from Illinois, is set to be inst alled as archbishop at his new home base on Friday — and it all starts with a knock at the door of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. “With his pastoral staff, he’ll probably knock on the door three times,” said David Gibson, Director of Religion and Culture at Fordham University. “This is Catholicism. It’s all about symbols and signs and the power of those symbols.”  Gibson likens Friday’s ceremony to a presidential inauguration. But those happen every four years. This is New York’s first new archbishop in 14 years.  “This is a real historic occasion for one of the largest archdioceses in the United States,” Gibson said.  Seventy-six-year old Cardinal Timothy Dolan will retain his red hat — and voting powers for any Papal Conclave — until his 80th birthday — four years from now. At that time, The Pope may elevate Hicks to Cardinal.  “Archbishop Hicks will just have to cool his heels for awhile,” Gibson said.  After Friday’s ceremony begins with that knock at the door, there will be a reading of the Papal letter installing Hicks. After which, the new archbishop will preside over his first Mass and Homily. And there could be quite an audience. The New York area has more than two million Catholics. There are 70 million across the country.  “We are very excited about it,” said Sandra Johnson of East Granby Connecticut, who was visiting St. Patrick’s Wednesday with her husband Phil. “The voice that comes from this church resonates far beyond New York City.” What to know about the new leader of the Archdiocese of New York Hicks, the current bishop of Joliet, Illinois, is replacing the retiring Cardinal Timothy Dolan, a prominent conservative figure in the U.S. Catholic hierarchy. Hicks takes over after Dolan last week finalized a plan to establish a $300 million fund to compensate victims of sexual abuse who had sued the archdiocese. Dolan had submitted his resignation in February, as required when he turned 75. But the Vatican often waits to make important leadership changes in dioceses if there is lingering abuse litigation or other governance matters that need to be resolved by the outgoing bishop. The handover, though, represents a significant new chapter for the U.S. Catholic Church, which is forging a new era with the Chicago-born Leo as the first American pope. Leo and the U.S. hierarchy have already shown willingness to challenge the Trump administration on immigration and other issues, and Hicks is seen as very much a Leo-style bishop. Hicks, 58, grew up in South Holland, Illinois, a short distance from the suburban Chicago childhood home of Leo, the former Robert Prevost. Like Prevost, who spent 20 years as a missionary in Peru, Hicks worked for five years in El Salvador heading a church-run orphanage program that operated in nine Latin American and Caribbean countries. In November, Hicks endorsed a special message from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops condemning the Trump administration’s immigration raids, which have targeted Chicago in particular. In a statement then urging Catholics to share the message, Hicks said it “affirms our solidarity with all our brothers and sisters as it expresses our concerns, opposition, and hopes with clarity and conviction. It is grounded in the church’s enduring commitment to the Catholic social teaching of human dignity and a call for meaningful immigration reform.” Though they both hail from Chicago, Hicks only met the future pope in 2024, when then-Cardinal Prevost visited one of Hicks’ parishes and took part in a question and answer conversation for the public. Hicks, who sat in the front pew, said he learned that day what sort of future pope Leo would be and said he liked what he saw both in his public remarks and then in their private conversation. He said he recognized their shared backgrounds and priorities to build bridges. “We grew up literally in the same radius, in the same neighborhood together. We played in the same parks, went swimming in the same pools, like the same pizza places.” Hicks served as a parish priest in Chicago and dean of training at Mundelein Seminary before Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich made him vicar general of the archdiocese in 2015. Three years later, Hicks was made an auxiliary bishop, and in 2020 Pope Francis named him bishop of Joliet, serving around 520,000 Catholics in seven counties. The New York archdiocese is among the largest in the nation, serving roughly 2.5 million Catholics in Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island in New York City, as well as seven counties to the north. This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. ...read more read less