Pope Francis has appointed Bishop Stephen Wright to be the next Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle.
Bishop Wright, 52, who has until now served as an auxiliary bishop of Birmingham, worked as a lawyer before his ordination and is Chairman of CAFOD’s trustees.
He succeeds Bishop Robert Byrne, who resigned in December2022 after just three years and almost a decade before his retirement age, saying that the demands of role had become “too great a burden”.
Following his resignation, an allegation of abusemade against him by a priest of another diocese was referred to the police, leading the Vatican to launch an abuse enquiry into the diocese, which found that Byrne had committed a “succession of errors of judgement”.
