Pope Francis has named Mgr Steven Lopes the first bishop of the ordinariate, which serves groups of former Anglicans living in full communion with the Catholic Church. Bishop-designate Lopes, 40, succeeds Mgr Jeffrey Steenson, 63, who has led the ordinariate in the United States, called the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St Peter, since Benedict XVI established it in 2012. The Vatican announced the appointment and Mgr Steenson’s resignation at the same time. Mgr Steenson said: “This is the happy outcome of much careful consultation with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, to whom I first made this request almost a year ago. I welcome this news with all my heart, for the ordinariate has now progressed to the point where a bishop is much needed for our life and mission.” The ordinariate, similar to a diocese, serves parishes in the United States and Canada, its offices in Houston, Texas. Mgr Steenson wasn’t eligible to become a bishop because he is married. After 28 years of ministry in the Church of England and in the Episcopal Church in the United States, he and his wife were received into the Catholic Church in 2007. He was ordained a Catholic priest two years later. Bishop-designate Lopes, who was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of San Francisco in 2001, has worked at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith since 2005. Since 2012 he has served as secretary of the Vatican’s Anglicanae Traditiones commission, which was responsible for developing Divine Worship, the new missal for use by ordinariates. The missal combines elements of the Catholic and Anglican liturgical traditions. Although Bishop-designate Lopes was not raised in the Anglican tradition, Mgr Steenson said he had worked so closely with former Anglicans and with the establishment of the ordinariates for them that “there is no one who knows better” the personal stories of those who joined the Catholic Church, as well as the history of the creation of the ordinariates for Anglicans who want to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church while maintaining elements of their Anglican heritage. Bishop-designate Lopes was born April 22, 1975, in Fremont, California. He studied philosophy at the University of San Francisco and at Leopold-Franzens University in Innsbruck.