BREAKING Pope Leo XIV Accepts Resignation of New York's Bishop Scharfenberger and Appoints Canadian Born Bishop

Pope Leo XIV Accepts Resignation of Bishop Edward Scharfenberger of the Diocese of Albany; Appoints Bishop Mark O’Connell as Successor
Pope Leo XIV has accepted the resignation of Most Reverend Edward B. Scharfenberger, 77, from the pastoral governance of the Diocese of Albany, and has appointed Most Reverend Mark O’Connell, currently auxiliary bishop of Boston, as his successor.
The appointment was announced at 6 a.m. on Monday, Oct. 20. Bishop O’Connell’s installation Mass will take place on Dec. 5, at 1 p.m., at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Albany. He will become the 11th bishop in the 178-year history of the Diocese of Albany.

About Bishop O'Connell
Bishop O’Connell, 61, was born in Toronto, Ontario, on June 25, 1964, to Thomas F. and Margaret M. O’Connell, both American citizens. His father was the head librarian at York University in Toronto. Bishop Connell has two brothers and one sister. The family returned to Massachusetts when O'Connell was 12, his father taking a job at Boston College.

Bishop O'Connell graduated from Dover-Sherborn High School in Dover, Mass., in 1982, earned a bachelor’s in English and philosophy from Boston College in 1986, then began to study for the priesthood at Saint John's Seminary in Boston.

On June 16, 1990, Bishop O’Connell was ordained into the priesthood at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston by Cardinal Bernard Law. He served in parishes in Woburn and Danvers, Mass., and as a college chaplain at Salem State College.

While studying at the Pontifical Athenaeum of the Holy Cross in Rome, Bishop O’Connell earned his licentiate in canon law in 1999 and his doctorate in 2002. He joined the canonical affairs staff of the Archdiocese of Boston in 2001, and was appointed judicial vicar in 2007, a position he held until 2018.

From 2009-12, Bishop O’Connell served as a senior consultor to the Canon Law Society of America. He has also served on the faculty of Saint John's Seminary and the Pope St. John XXIII National Seminary in Weston, Massachusetts. From 2011-14, he was a co-host on the daily radio program “The Good Catholic Life,” broadcast on radio station WQOM in Boston.

On June 3, 2016, Pope Francis appointed Bishop O’Connell as an auxiliary bishop of Boston and titular bishop of Gigthi in Tripolitana. He is a member of the United State Catholic Conference of Bishop’s Committee for the Protection of Children & Young People and along with Bishop John P. Dolan of Phoenix is a nominee for chair-elect of the committee, which will be voted on during the bishops’ upcoming 2025 plenary assembly in Baltimore in November.

Bishop O’Connell also started a podcast in September called “Listening to Catholic Women,” in which he conducts interviews with Catholic women about their faith and their roles in the Catholic Church. The podcast is described as “an exercise in ‘synodality,’ mutual collaborative listening, guided by the Holy Spirit, in which all of the faithful have something to learn from each other, in order to know what God is saying to the Church.”

Sources: USCCB and https://evangelist.org/news/2025/oct/20/bishop-mark-w-oconnel-named-new-bishop-of-albany