BISHOP MARK W. O'CONNELL NAMED NEW BISHOP OF ALBANY

BREAKING NEWS: Pope Leo names auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Boston as 11th Bishop of Albany; will replace Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger, who has led Diocese since 2014

Bishop Mark O’Connell, newly named 11th bishop of the Albany Diocese, holds a news conference on Monday, Oct. 20, 2025, at the Pastoral Center in Albany, N.Y. Cindy Schultz for The Evangelist (Courtesy photo of CINDY SCHULTZ)

Bishop Mark W. O’Connell has been appointed the new Bishop of Albany by Pope Leo XIV. Bishop O’Connell, who is currently the Auxiliary Bishop, Vicar General and Moderator of the Curia for the Archdiocese of Boston, will take over for Bishop Edward B. Scharfenberger, who has led the Diocese of Albany since 2014.

The appointment was announced at 6 a.m. on Monday, Oct. 20. Bishop O’Connell’s installation Mass is slated to take place on Dec. 5. He will become the 11th bishop in the 178-year history of the Diocese of Albany.

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 Bishop 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 States 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.”