Robert Barron: No ordinary bishop

Feb. 10—ROCHESTER — In June 2022, when a

new bishop was named to lead the Winona-Rochester diocese,

the news caused a stir and some incredulity among the Catholic community when they heard who it was: the Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles Robert Barron.

"That can't be right," Father Will Thompson, the diocese's vicar general, recalled saying when someone showed him a social media post announcing Barron's appointment.

It was not an uncommon response among the Catholic faithful. There were reasons for Thompson's and others' skepticism and disbelief.

Barron wasn't your ordinary new bishop. Barron is often compared to Archbishop Fulton Sheen. From the 1930s through the '60s, Sheen excelled at radio and television, the dominant media forms of the time. Barron, meanwhile, became one of America's best known prelates through his mastery of social media. Among top Catholics, Barron is second only to Pope Francis in social media followers.

"(Barron) is the most popular and influential cyber-evangelist in American Catholicism," said one professor of theology and religious studies.

And, in 2022, he was coming to the Winona-Rochester diocese.

Barron's elevation to bishop of Winona-Rochester, a diocese which stretches across the southern part of Minnesota, came when he was already a national figure. His calling card was

Word on Fire,

an independent Catholic media organization he founded when he was a Chicago priest broadcasting homilies on a local radio station.

Founded 25 years ago, Word on Fire started as a short radio program broadcast by Barron and has evolved over time from a website into a global social media organization that uses digital and social media to introduce Catholicism to the broader world. With every new platform or combination of platforms, his audience has grown.

In 2011, Barron created a splash in both the Catholic and secular worlds when Word on Fire produced "Catholicism," a documentary miniseries on the faith that was broadcast on PBS stations.

"My feeling was simply why not use these new tools available to us," Barron said in an interview with the Post Bulletin. "For me, it was a no-brainer. And we just found over the years, we found success with it and built up an audience."

Today, Word on Fire has 3 million Facebook followers, 980,000 YouTube subscribers, 412,000 Instagram followers and 260,000 Twitter followers.

Thompson, the diocese's vicar general, said there are many active Catholics who rely on Word on Fire for their "daily spiritual nourishment." But a major focus of Barron's ministry is on people who profess no religious affiliation at all — people called "nones."

Many of Barron's interviews are with non-Catholics — actors, thinkers or political figures who have gone through a religious experience or have interesting things to say about religion.

When the actor Shia LaBeouf embraced Catholicism after playing a saint for the film "Padre Pio," LaBeouf shared the news in an interview with Barron on his WOF YouTube channel. Barron also confirmed LaBeouf into the faith.

Barron also held a roundtable with actor Ethan Hawke and his daughter, actress Maya Hawke, talking about the religious experience they went through while making a film about Christian author Flannery O'Connor.

"He interacts with people at a pretty high intellectual level oftentimes," Thompson said. "And part of his show is that the Catholic faith does have a rich, intellectual tradition."

Barron's assignment to Winona-Rochester struck many as incongruous. It was a promotion, since he was now in charge of his own diocese. But his transfer from Los Angeles, the largest diocese in America with 4 million members, to Winona-Rochester, a diocese of 114,000 members, put him in charge of a much smaller flock. And some voices on social media saw the move as a demotion.

"Winona-Rochester, MN? No offense to Minnesotans, but I doubt most Catholics even knew there was a diocese of Winona-Rochester, MN," said Eric Sammons, an author and editor of Crisis Magazine, a Catholic publication, on X, formerly Twitter. "It's essentially a transfer to Siberia."

What's more, the move uprooted Barron from a major hub of culture, where Word on Fire appeared to be a natural fit. As an auxiliary bishop, he could devote time to Word on Fire and he was connected to Hollywood, Sammons said.

Barron regards speculation about the significance of his assignment here as "nonsense."

"I never used the L.A. media market in any way. I've got my own media market, Word on Fire," Barron said. "Word on Fire simply moved from Santa Barbara to here. That made zero difference to any of the work that I'm doing."

Word on Fire has offices in Chicago, Dallas and Rochester, with a recording studio on the second floor of the downtown Wells Fargo Building where Barron does his sermons and podcasts for WOF.

Barron views his appointment to Winona-Rochester as a fairly "typical move" for the church given his situation. Auxiliary bishops usually serve a half dozen or so years before getting their own small-or-medium-size diocese. To be appointed to Winona-Rochester, which Barron calls a medium-sized diocese, after serving seven years in Los Angeles was "standard operating procedure for the church."

"I have kind of a unique profile, because I do the wider work around the country and around the globe, but it's pretty much par for the course," Barron said.

But Barron also inherited a diocese that is struggling. Last month, Thompson published an article for The Courier, the diocese's online publication, that described in numbers how desperate the diocese's vital signs have become.

From 2009 to 2022, in nearly every category of measurement, from diocesan and religious priests to religious sisters and brothers to confirmations and weddings, the numbers were down. Once a diocese of 130,000 people, Winona-Rochester has 114,000 Catholics, according to Thompson. Barron was taken aback when he saw the numbers.

"When I shared those numbers with him, I forgot his exact response, but it was something along the lines of 'That's horrible,'" Thompson said. "We need to do something about that."

Barron said Winona-Rochester, like many dioceses across the county, faces two fundamental problems: It needs more priests and it needs more people in the pews. And reviving those numbers is among his two top priorities. He said he and other leaders are considering hosting a diocesan-wide synod to brainstorm how to improve the situation.

Barron said the diocese has made progress on the front of forming new priests. The diocese has 24 seminarians currently, "which is big for a diocese our size" and next year, it could be closer to 30.

"We're making some progress there," Barron said. "Evangelization has been my preoccupation. That's the whole point of Word on Fire — to bring people back to the church. So it's just kind of translating that into this diocesan context."

Some have expressed concerns that Word on Fire creates a competition for Barron's energy and time and will distract from his responsibilities as bishop. Steven Millies, a director of the Bernardin Center, has argued that in theological sense, when Barron became bishop of Winona-Rochester, he became wedded to a particular people and place as bishop. His authority stops at the diocese's border. Will he unplug Word on Fire?

Barron said that wherever he has served — whether as rector of a seminary in Chicago or auxiliary bishop in L.A — he has been involved with Word on Fire and never has it been in competition with his work in the church.

"It's an invented problem," Barron said. "It's never been a problem for me in any of the times when I've been an ecclesiastical administrator. Was Fulton Sheen asked to stop doing all of his speaking and teaching and writing when he was bishop of Rochester, New York? No. Has the Apostolic Nuncio asked me to stop? No. Has the pope ever told me to stop doing this? No.

"Ten percent of my work gets about 100% of publicity, and 90% of my work gets almost no publicity. And that's what sets up this tension in some people's minds," Barron said.

Barron's high profile tends to make him a lightning rod for commentary and criticism. And it can come from both the left and the right politically. But Catholic observers say Barron has begun skewing more rightward politically. The take-off point was a debate over a couple of statues.

Sam Rocha, a professor of educational studies at the University of British Columbia, says Barron typically didn't take "overtly political positions" during much of his career. But there was a noticeable change in 2020 when a controversy broke out over the statue of St. Damien of Molokai in the U.S. Capitol and how it should be viewed.

It was ignited when U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat, called the statue a symbol of white supremacy. Barron defended St. Damien, a priest who conducted missionary work in Hawaii and spent many years ministering to a leper colony.

Barron also rose to the defense of Junipero Serra, an 18th-century Franciscan missionary considered by critics to be a symbol of an oppressive colonial system, in another statue controversy.

And lately, Barron has been a scourge of "wokeism," a progressive ideology that Barron says he opposes because "it's against Catholic social teaching." Barron also

recently came out against physician-assisted suicide

legislation

supported by DFLers in the Minnesota Legislature,

urging Catholics to oppose the proposal because it elevated personal choice and autonomy at the expense of moral values.

Barron says he doesn't take political positions.

"I've spoken to figures on the right," Barron said. "I've also spoken at Google headquarters, Facebook headquarters. I've spoken to Amazon headquarters. I've also spoken to the U.S. Congress. I've spoken at the British Parliament. I just had an interview with Ro Khana, who's a Democratic congressman from California from Silicon Valley.

"I'm happy to talk to anybody," Barron said.