Pope Francis has appointed Coadjutor Archbishop Paul Etienne as Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Seattle and accepted the resignation of the Most Reverend J. Peter Sartain from the pastoral governance of the same see.
Archbishop Etienne graduated from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota obtaining a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration in 1986. He served with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) as Assistant Coordinator for Papal Visits for Pope John Paul II to the United States. He later pursued his ecclesiastical studies at Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, where he obtained a bachelor’s in Sacred Theology in 1995.
Archbishop Etienne was ordained priest for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis on June 27, 1992. On October 19, 2009, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI appointed him Bishop of Cheyenne. On April 29, 2019, Pope Francis appointed him Coadjutor Archbishop of Seattle.
His assignments included: Vocation Director at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish in New Albany, Spiritual Director at St. Meinrad School of Theology, Vice-Rector of the Bishop Simon Bruté College Seminary, member of the Archdiocesan Review Board, pastor at St. Simon and several other parishes.
Archbishop J. Peter Sartain was ordained a priest in 1978 in Memphis, Tennessee. He served as Bishop of the Diocese of Little Rock from 2000 to 2006 and then served as Bishop of Joliet from 2006 to 2010.
Archbishop Sartain serves on a number of Catholic boards and has served as Secretary of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. He is the author of several books, including Of You My Heart Has Spoken (Arkansas Catholic, 2005); Strengthen Your Brothers: An Archbishop’s Letters of Encouragement to His Priests (Liturgical Press, 2012), and The Journey to the Heart of Jesus (Our Sunday Visitor, 2014).
The Archdiocese of Seattle is composed of 24,814 square miles in the state of Washington and has a total population of 5,501,540 of which 863,000 or 15.7 percent are Catholic.
