Pope Francis has appointed as coadjutor archbishop of Seattle, Archbishop Paul D. Etienne, currently archbishop of Anchorage. Archbishop Etienne was born on June 15, 1959, in Tell City, Indiana. He attended the North American College in Rome and was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis in 1992.
Archbishop Etienne holds a bachelors and licentiate of theology from the Gregorian University in Rome. After ordination, he served in several Indianapolis parishes and was the director of vocations for the archdiocese. In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI named him bishop of Cheyenne where he was ordained as bishop on December 14, 2009. Archbishop Etienne was named Archbishop of Anchorage on October 4, 2016, by Pope Francis and was installed, November 9, 2016.
Archbishop Etienne currently serves as chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on National Collections.
The Archdiocese of Seattle comprises of 64,269 square miles and has a total population of 5,501,540 of which 863,000 or 15.7 percent, are Catholic. The Most Reverend James Peter Sartain is the fifth and current Archbishop of Seattle.
