As he arrives in the Motor City, Archbishop-designate Weisenburger has more in common with Detroiters than many realize
DETROIT — Detroit’s next archbishop drives a Chevy, has experience ministering in a multicultural border diocese and has worked on the canonization cause of a beatified U.S.-born priest.
Even though Archbishop-designate Edward J. Weisenburger had never been to Michigan before his Feb. 11 appointment as the sixth archbishop of Detroit — and the 20-degree winters are a bit colder than he’s used to — it’s not hard to find ways in which he’ll fit right in.
On the surface, Pope Francis’ decision to appoint the 64-year-old bishop of Tucson, Arizona — 1,670 miles away — as chief shepherd of the Motor City might not have been on many Church watchers’ proverbial bingo cards.
But the Holy Father has a way of giving marvelous surprises.
Speaking with Detroit Catholic during an interview before his Feb. 11 press conference, Archbishop-designate Weisenburger said “no one was more surprised than me” when he received the early morning phone call from the pope’s ambassador.
“I was about to step onto my treadmill, and my cellphone said Cardinal Christophe Pierre (apostolic nuncio to the United States) was calling,” Archbishop-designate Weisenburger said. “I thought, ‘Uh oh.’ So I took the call, and he was very gracious, very kind and happy, and he told me the Holy Father was pleased with my work and was asking me to transfer to the Archdiocese of Detroit.”
Archbishop-designate Weisenburger joked that “I don’t keep an external defibrillator at my home, but I could have used one, because that was not on my radar.”
Humbled and shocked, Archbishop-designate Weisenburger said Cardinal Pierre counseled him that “there’s always a benefit to responding ‘yes’ to the Holy Father.”
Blessedly, "yes" was his answer, and in just a few short days, on March 18, he will officially assume leadership of Detroit's Catholic Church, succeeding Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron.
It won’t be the first time Detroit's new archbishop has been asked to move far from home for the sake of the Gospel. In fact, Archbishop-designate Weisenburger said, Detroit will be “my fourth diocese, my fourth province, in my fourth region” of the U.S. Church.
Learning to say “yes” was a crucial lesson Archbishop-designate Weisenburger recalled from early in his formation for the priesthood. After graduating from seminary college, he was sent to study at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, and recalled expressing hesitation to his spiritual director.
“This very sweet, kind man listened graciously to me and said, ‘Ed, whatever you decide to do is fine, but at some point, if you are called to priesthood, you’re going to have to learn to say ‘yes,’” Archbishop-designate Weisenburger told Detroit Catholic. “This notion of ‘Let me think about it,’ is not what the Virgin Mary said when asked to do something for Our Lord.”
The prospect of moving across the country to a new climate, a new city and a new culture isn’t so much daunting as it is intriguing, he added.
“When I was new in Tucson, I remember walking out in the morning and getting in my car, seeing mountains, palm trees and cactuses, and thinking, ‘What’s going on here?’ But when you’re open to the mystery of something completely new, it tends to be filled with surprises and blessings,” he said.
While he’ll be getting to know the Great Lakes state for the first time, Archbishop-designate Weisenburger pointed out his episcopal lineage does, in fact, run through Michigan.
“I was ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop Charles Salatka, who was a Grand Rapids priest, auxiliary bishop and bishop of Marquette, so you can trace my ordination right back to Michigan,” he said.
The new Detroit archbishop-designate made headlines last year when, through the generosity of an auto dealer in Arizona, he announced he would be driving “the first Chevrolet Equinox EV sold in Tucson,” a zero-emission vehicle.
The all-electric Chevy with a 300-mile range has been particularly helpful as he’s crisscrossed the 42,707-square-mile Diocese of Tucson for confirmations, pastoral visits and parish events.
Although Midwesterners might picture Tucson as a flat, desert landscape dotted with cactuses, Archbishop-designate Weisenburger said the diocese, which wraps around the southern part of Arizona over nine expansive counties, has a lot of mountains, too.
“Tucson has four mountain ranges north, south, east and west, and we’re right in the middle,” he said. “In my first week here, I remember I had to go to Yuma, and I hadn’t really looked at the map yet. I started driving west, and I passed the Catalina Mountains. About 50 minutes later, I passed another ridge of mountains. And then I passed those mountains and there was another ridge of mountains. It’s about non-stop mountains all the way to California.”
Although he won’t have quite the same distance to drive in Metro Detroit, Archbishop-designate Weisenburger said he looks forward to exploring Michigan's lakes and communities, adding “it will be interesting to see what I encounter in the car in Michigan.”
As a border diocese, Tucson “is largely a blend of Hispanic and Anglo,” and almost all of its parishes offer Mass in Spanish and English, Archbishop-designate Weisenburger said. Although the new archbishop admits his Spanish isn’t “100% fluent,” he said “it has certainly grown” since his arrival in Tucson in 2017.
In the Archdiocese of Detroit, he'll encounter a local Church with a growing Hispanic population, but also one of the most diverse dioceses in the country, with Mass celebrated regularly in more than a dozen languages.
Like the Archdiocese of Detroit, the Diocese of Tucson traces its roots back to Jesuit missionaries who brought the Catholic faith from Europe in the 1600s. One missionary in particular, Venerable Padre Eusebio Francesco Kino, is credited with evangelizing the many Native American peoples in the borderlands region that became southern Arizona and northern Sonora, Mexico, bridging cultural barriers and establishing 21 thriving missions via horseback.
Padre Kino’s cause for canonization advanced when, in 2020, Pope Francis declared him “venerable,” recognizing the Jesuit’s heroic virtues.
“Padre Kino, I believe, will be canonized at some point,” Archbishop-designate Weisenburger said.
Like Detroit, which was founded by French missionaries in 1701, Archbishop-designate Weisenburger described Tucson as "a very rich church whose history is incredible."
The early missionaries' creativity and resourcefulness in bringing the Catholic faith to the native peoples had a long-lasting impact on the region, he said.
"The many different Native American peoples who were here were incredibly receptive to the Gospel of Jesus Christ," Archbishop-designate Weisenburger said. "The Jesuit missionaries would struggle very hard to learn the languages of the local indigenous people, and then evangelize within their languages and concepts. It's a very different approach, and it was an immensely successful approach."
Earlier in his ministry, as a priest of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, Archbishop-designate Weisenburger was involved in the canonization cause of another missionary: Blessed Stanley Rother, an Oklahoma priest who was martyred in Guatemala in 1981 while ministering at a diocesan mission parish.
From 1995 to 2002, Archbishop-designate Weisenburger served as pastor of Holy Trinity Parish in Okarche, Oklahoma, a close-knit farming community where Fr. Rother had grown up. During his time there, he got to know the Rother family, and eventually served as promoter of justice for the priest’s canonization cause.
On Sept. 23, 2017, Fr. Rother became the first U.S.-born man to be declared a “blessed” during a beatification Mass in downtown Oklahoma City. The Mass took place just two months before Detroit’s own Blessed Solanus Casey became the second.
'Blessed are those who trust'
As he anticipates his March 18 installation in Detroit, Archbishop-designate Weisenburger said he looks forward to getting to know Detroit's story and communities, even as Detroiters look forward to getting to know him.
Already, his schedule is filling up with Masses, visits and opportunities to get out and meet southeast Michigan's faithful in the weeks and months ahead.
“I really love being with people, and I really look forward to being with them as much as I can,” he said.
As far as hobbies, Archbishop-designate Weisenburger said he loves to read, alternating between “theological works and quality novels.” He has a particular affinity for “The Imitation of Christ” by Thomas à Kempis. “I try to read just a few pages, sometimes one page a day; it’s so rich,” he said.
He also enjoys cooking, and has a love for classical music that dates back to his childhood.
“I actually played with the Lawton (Oklahoma) Philharmonic the first movement of a heightened piano concerto when I was in ninth grade,” he said. “So I have a classical music background, and I’m really looking forward to connecting with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.”
As he prepares to begin his new assignment, Archbishop-designate Weisenburger said his prayer has consisted of “mostly listening” to what the Lord wants to reveal in the days and months ahead. And that message has been consistent.
“In the last couple of weeks, what has come to me more and more is the same message that I keep stumbling across: ‘Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,’ and ‘Perfect love casts out all fear,’” Archbishop-elect Weisenburger said. "And I say, 'Lord, but I'm nervous.' But the Lord does seems to be saying pretty loudly, 'Trust.'"
As he prepares to lead his third diocese, the former bishop of Salina, Kansas, and bishop of Tucson, Arizona, says he’s optimistic about the future in Detroit — both for himself and for the archdiocese.
“I have found repeatedly in life that when we’re open to the mystery of the future, good things unfold,” he said.
