Vatican accepts resignation of Belleville Bishop Edward Braxton, appoints a successor
Bishop Edward K. Braxton, 75, is retiring after nearly 15 years in the Catholic Diocese of Belleville.
He will be replaced by the Rev. Michael G. McGovern, according to a news release emailed early Friday morning by Monsignor John T. Myler, diocesan spokesman and rector at the Cathedral of St. Peter in Belleville.
McGovern, 55, a pastor in the Archdiocese of Chicago, had been named interim episcopal vicar of Vicariate less than two months ago.
Braxton submitted his resignation to the Vatican on June 28, 2019, when he turned 75. Canon law requires that of all Catholic bishops, but it’s up to Pope Francis when or whether to replace, remove or allow them to continue in service.
The Belleville diocese serves about 80,000 Catholics in more than 100 parishes across Southern Illinois. McGovern will be its ninth bishop since 1888.
The news release didn’t provide a timeline on when Braxton will be leaving or when McGovern will be installed. Both will make written and video statements sometime Friday morning, according to Myler.
McGovern was born on July 1, 1964, in Chicago and attended Christ the King parish primary school and St. Ignatius College Prep secondary school. He earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy at Loyola University Chicago and studied at DePaul University School of Law.
McGovern entered the seminary and completed his ecclesiastical studies at University of St. Mary of the Lake seminary in Mundelein. He was ordained a priest for the Chicago archdiocese in 1994.
Since ordination, he has served as parish vicar at Queen of the Universe Parish in Chicago, St. Mary Parish in Lake Forest and St. Juliana Parish in Chicago; assistant chancellor and vice chancellor; delegate of the archbishop for extradiocesan and foreign priests; parish priest at St. Mary Parish in Lake Forest and St. Raphael the Archangel Parish in Old Mill Creek; and vicar forane of Deanery A of Vicariate I.
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Braxton has a long and wide-ranging resume with the Catholic church.
A Chicago native, he served as pastor or associate pastor in several Illinois parishes, taught at Harvard and Notre Dame and held administrative positions before becoming auxiliary bishop in St. Louis and later bishop in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
In 2005, Braxton replaced Bishop Wilton D. Gregory in Belleville when Gregory was installed as archbishop in Atlanta. Gregory now is archbishop in Washington, D.C.
“My spiritual journey as a priest, like that of every priest, has been filled with many exhilarating joys and not a few deep sorrows,” Braxton said in a 2015 BND profile. “But I have never been sorry that I was a priest.”
Braxton has led the Belleville diocese through change and controversy, including the formation of parish partnerships in the face of a priest shortage and the priest sexual-abuse scandal that has rocked the Catholic church nationally.
In 2018, the Rev. Gerald R. Hechenberger — an associate pastor in Mascoutah, Fayetteville and St. Libory — was removed from ministry after being charged with possession of child pornography and methamphetamine. He died last month while serving a prison sentence.
Braxton, who is black, also has sought to help parishioners understand the U.S. racial divide and encouraged them to take positive action. He is known as a serious-minded theologian who values education, tradition and quiet reflection. His mantra is “listen, learn, think, pray and act.”
“You must listen to other people, to other experiences,” Braxton said in 2018 at St. Clare Catholic Church in O’Fallon in a talk on race. “You must learn from those experiences. Then you must think about what you learned and how that suggests you must change some aspect of your life.
“You must think hard, talk to others, family members who disagree with you (and) talk to others whose lives are different than yours. Then you must pray ... In prayer, you may discern what you can do.”
This story was originally published April 3, 2020 at 7:01 AM.
