Bishop Steven J. Lopes, the bishop of the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, was elected to head the Committee for Divine Worship by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) at their annual general assembly in Baltimore. The bishop’s election significantly raises the Ordinariate’s profile, and the gifts the Ordinariate brings to the broader Catholic Church, particularly in witness to the Eucharist.
Bishop Lopes was elected to the position on November 16, 2021 in a 121-120 vote over Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski of St. Louis. With the U.S. bishops intent on Eucharistic Renewal, Bishop Lopes’ expertise in this area [as you can hear in the ACS podcast below] was something doubtless many bishops had in mind when casting their votes.
Bishop Lopes’ dissertation for his Doctorate in Sacred Theology was “From the Trinity to the Eucharist: Towards a Trinitarian Theology of the Sacrifice of Christ and Its Re-Presentation in the Eucharist of the Church.” In interviews with the National Catholic Register, Bishop Lopes has shared how the Holy Eucharist beautifully informs the experience of parish fellowship and the praying of the Daily Offices, or the Liturgy of the Hours.
Time and again, the bishop has publicly shared the insights of “attentive faith” his Ordinariate communities and clergy provide the wider Church. In his keynote address at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast earlier in September – another historic Ordinariate milestone – Bishop Lopes pointed to the Ordinariate’s witness and how its founding members “embarked on the long journey towards the fullness of Catholic unity not because it was easy or comfortable, but because it was true.”
With Bishop Lopes at the helm of the USCCB’s liturgy committee, the U.S. Church’s Eucharistic Renewal efforts gets a bishop who has a keen understanding of Vatican II’s vision for the Church, and knows how beautiful, reverent liturgy and Pope Francis’s vision of “missionary discipleship” powerfully come together. Bishop Lopes will doubtless be counting on the Ordinariate parishes and communities to put their belief in the Eucharist on a lampstand and work collaboratively with other local dioceses to reinvigorate the faith of Catholics in Jesus Christ’s real presence in the Holy Eucharist.
Peter Jesserer Smith is the vice-president of the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society and a staff writer at EWTN's National Catholic Register. The author’s analysis is his own. This article first appeared in the December 2021 issue of the St. Peter's Rambler.