Charlotte
By CATHOLIC NEWS HERALD STAFF | Published April 9, 2024
CHARLOTTE, North Carolina—Pope Francis has appointed Father Michael T. Martin, OFM Conv., as bishop of the Diocese of Charlotte. The announcement was made the morning of April 9. Father Martin is pastor of St. Philip Benizi Church in Jonesboro in the Archdiocese of Atlanta.
Current Charlotte Bishop Peter J. Jugis is retiring due to health limitations from a kidney condition.
Bishop-designate Martin, 62, is a priest of the Order of Friars Minor Conventual. He has deep roots in Catholic education—having served as a teacher, coach and school administrator in Baltimore, New York and Durham, North Carolina—and arrives at a time of record enrollment in the Diocese of Charlotte’s 20 schools.
He will be ordained and installed as the fifth Bishop of Charlotte on May 29 at St. Mark Catholic Church in Huntersville.
“I am amazed and humbled that the Holy Father has faith in me to call me to serve the people of Western North Carolina,” Bishop-designate Martin said. “I am excited to get to know you and to listen to the ways in which together we can respond to the call of the Holy Spirit to be disciples of Jesus.”
The Diocese of Charlotte held a morning press conference April 9 in which Bishop Jugis, a Charlotte native, introduced his successor. Bishop Jugis called it “a joy and a blessing” to have been able to serve the people of God in his home diocese.
“We are grateful to the Holy Father that he has chosen to send him to us,” he said about the bishop-designate.
St. Philip Benizi Church’s pastor, Father Michael Martin, OFM Conv, leads the Good Friday service in…
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