On 5 August the Vatican announced that Pope Francis has accepted the resignation of Cardinal Sean O'Malley, one of Catholicism’s most influential leaders in the US.
It brings to an end the two decades that O'Malley has served as Archbishop of Boston, which included his having to preside over the fallout of the clerical sexual abuse scandal that impacted the Catholic Church in the US but also especially in Boston. His tenure also included the terrorist attacks of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, when two explosive devices killed three and injured hundreds of others during the Boston marathon.
Bishop Richard Henning of Providence has been named as O’Malley’s successor. Henning becomes a metropolitan archbishop, with direct authority over Boston and an indirect supervisory role over six other dioceses in Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.
