Vatican City, Apr 8, 2025 / 09:40 am

Pope Francis has appointed Bishop Bruce Lewandowski as the new head of the Diocese of Providence, Rhode Island, the Vatican announced Tuesday.

Lewandowski, 57, currently serves as an auxiliary bishop in the Archdiocese of Baltimore. He will be installed in Providence on May 20, becoming the leader of Rhode Island’s only Catholic diocese.

The Providence see has been vacant since October 2024, when Bishop Richard Henning became the archbishop of Boston. 

“Pope Francis could not have chosen a better bishop for the Diocese of Providence,” Baltimore Archbishop William Lori said in a statement.

Lori praised Lewandowski for his leadership, particularly among Hispanic Catholics, and for overseeing parish realignments during his time in Baltimore.

Fluent in Spanish and Portuguese, Lewandowski said he would especially miss the Hispanic community in Baltimore.

“From the start, they welcomed me as one of their own. We’ve been through so much together,” he told Baltimore’s Catholic Review. “It will be hard to leave them.”

Born in Toledo, Ohio, in 1968, Lewandowski joined the Redemptorist order, professing final vows in 1988. He was ordained a priest in 1994 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.

His pastoral assignments have taken him from New York and Philadelphia to the West Indies. He served as pastor at parishes in the Bronx, St. Lucia, and Philadelphia, including St. Boniface and Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. From 2011 to 2015, he was vicar for cultural ministries in Philadelphia.

He led the Sacred Heart of Jesus/Sagrado Corazón de Jesús in Baltimore from 2016 until his episcopal consecration and was named interim delegate for Hispanic ministry in 2019.

Lewandowski was appointed auxiliary bishop of Baltimore amid the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

The Diocese of Providence was established by Pope Pius IX in 1872. It spans 1,085 square miles and serves nearly 599,000 Catholics, about half of Rhode Island’s population.