At barely one minute past our scheduled 2 p.m. interview time, the future archbishop of Boston bounds down the second-floor hallway of the chancery toward his office in the Diocese of Providence chancery building, stopping in the waiting area to collect the executive editor of his newspaper for a scheduled final interview to allow him a chance to reflect on his time as the ninth bishop of Providence.
Apologizing for the delay, Archbishop Richard G. Henning leads the way to the end of the hall and his office, which by this time is devoid of nearly all personal items — with the movers beginning earlier that morning to transfer his belongings to Boston — save for what appears to be a white small-brimmed straw hat resting comfortably on one of the four seats making up the conversation area in the middle of the office.
He was just returning from a Josephinum Board meeting in Columbus, Ohio, via New York City, where he retrieved his 11-year-old beloved yellow Labrador Retriever, Agnes, and drove the final leg to Providence, arriving shortly before.
For the past 18 months, Archbishop Henning has kept up this frenetic pace, bounding from one parish community to another across the diocese, eager to meet as many of his new flock as possible since becoming the ninth bishop of Providence on May 1, 2023, after having been received as coadjutor to Bishop Thomas J. Tobin in January.
“I really wasn’t looking to go anywhere; I was perfectly happy here,” Archbishop Henning says of the call that turned his new world upside down.
“When the nuncio called, my instinct was to say ‘yes,’ but I tried to argue with him and talk him out of it, saying this is not the right time — Providence is at a critical juncture, and we have pastoral going on, but none of those arguments worked.
He said that the Holy Father’s appointment of him to succeed Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, OFM Cap., the retiring archbishop of Boston, came as much of a surprise to him as anyone else and that he had mixed feelings about it. He said that he began to feel more comfortable with the idea when he attended the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis this summer along with a large delegation from the diocese.
There, he arrived to greet his group on the floor of Lucas Oil Stadium, the famous home of the Indianapolis Colts. He unfurled a state of Rhode Island flag, with its motto, “Hope,” something he had become noted for since doing the same at his Mass of Installation.
“The State of Hope” became a running theme of his episcopacy; he even penned a column by that name weekly in his diocesan newspaper.
“The State of Hope” is fundamentally about the people,” Archbishop Henning said. “It’s not the physical geography, it’s the people who inhabit this space. I understood that more and more as I visited the state. When I arrived, I was focused on the flag and its imagery — its beautiful imagery, no doubt — but I learned in the course of the year what that does mean. What it means is that the people here are really hard-working, humble, hospitable, community-minded people.”
He said that while he knows there’s a lot of wealth in the state, especially along its beautiful shores, he saw that there are also a lot of people who were not so well off.
“Yet, I see how generous the are to each other when they are in need, in terms of their community needs, their soup kitchens and food pantries,” he noted.
And the Diocese of Providence has a pretty significant footprint in terms of caring for people in need and in all varieties of circumstances at the grassroots level.
“That’s where I see the hope.”
He said he understands why many people are disappointed that he would come and go so quickly from the diocese.
“It was never about me. It’s about Jesus Christ and our faith in him, how that turns us toward each other, and none of those things change. And there will be a new bishop, one better than me, and the hope will go on,” he said.
He said that he’s really come to value the friendship of the priests here, noting that the presbyterate here is a good one, and they show a genuine fraternity and accord among them.
He said that pastors can be “quite ferociously independent,” while also having the wisdom to engage with each other and across some of their disagreements and age differences.
“I joke with them sometimes that the Independent Man on the top the Statehouse is the pastor of every parish,” he said with a chuckle.
And he met all of them as he crisscrossed the state, maintaining a very busy calendar each day, for two reasons.
The first being that he understood that it would be meaningful for people to meet and break bread with their bishop.
“I understood early on that the culture of Rhode Island is a highly social, hospitable culture. That was pretty clear,” he said. “I didn’t just go celebrate the Mass, I visited the school and took part in coffee ‘ans and other events.”
The second reason was that it was important for him to be able to understand the parish communities that his future decision might impact.
“I knew that there were difficult decisions that had to be made, and it is my conviction that anyone in any kind of leadership, let alone Church leadership, should not make decisions about people’s lives without having some sense of having met them,” he said.
“It’s why I rushed, in a sense. It’s not a small diocese, it’s a small state but it’s not a small diocese, but I made the effort to crisscross it in a year or so.”
People from the state’s 39 cities and towns welcomed him right from the beginning and showed their support enthusiastically.
“I don’t think Rhode Islanders realize that the kind of feast culture we have here is gone in many other places because nobody volunteers or gets involved,” he said.
He was heartened that in Rhode Island, people are very generous and they step up to get involved.
“The generosity of spirt – again, that’s where the hope is.”
In his new ministry, Archbishop Henning won’t be able to traverse his new archdiocese as quickly as he had become accustomed to.
While the province he will oversee encompasses all the New England states, except for Rhode Island and Connecticut, his actual governing authority as archbishop will be more limited, with the city of Boston at its center and extending roughly to the North Shore and Merrimack Valley and mainly west to the communities inside the Rte. 495 belt.
That more defined area is still home to more than two million Catholics and the logistics of navigating as archbishop will be much more challenging than he has become accustomed to, both in Providence and in his prior ministry as auxiliary bishop in Rockville Centre, Long Island.
“My sense is that in the time I’ve been here there’s been some excitement, which is good, I think, that people have been excited about their parishes, about their faith.
“Post-COVID God is at work — I see signs of new life,” he says, notably, and surprisingly on the campuses of local colleges and universities, including Bryant University, The University of Rhode Island, Providence College and Brown University.
“There’s amazing Catholic ministry going on in these places and the students that I’m meeting there are full of faith and full of questions. Authentic faith is also about being challenged.”
He said that peer pressure to abandon the faith can be intense for some students, so he recognizes that they practice their faith openly while understanding “the cost of discipleship.”
He said that students are interested in the call of the faith and he sees a revival going on.
This, too, circles back to his theme of hope for the future.
He recognizes the impact he, as a Spanish speaker who learned the language specifically to minister to members of the Spanish community in Long Island, has had on the large Hispanic community in the Diocese of Providence.
“There are not enough bishops in the U.S. who speak Spanish, so I’ve been riding the wave,” he says of the excitement his episcopacy has garnered in the community.
“My Spanish is not perfect but they rejoice in it,” he says, noting how the likelihood is not high that the next bishop will be able to speak Spanish.
“This had never been about me, this is about Jesus Christ,” he says.