Joseph Perry (bishop)

Education

A native of Chicago, Illinois, Joseph Perry attended various Catholic elementary schools in Chicago between 1954 and 1962. For one year, in 1962, he attended Carver High School, moving on to St. Lawrence Seminary High School for the remainder of his high school years.

Perry undertook undergraduate studies (1967) at Saint Joseph's College in Rensselaer, Indiana and the Capuchin Seminary of St. Mary, Crown Point, Indiana, graduating in 1971 with two B.A. degrees in Philosophy and Theology, with a minor in Education. Perry obtained a Master of Divinity from St. Francis Seminary in 1975. Perry attended the Catholic University of America, Washington DC 1979-1981 where he matriculated with the licentiate degree J.C.L. (license) in canon law.

Ordination and ministry

Perry was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee on May 24, 1975. From the mid-1970s to the late 1990s, Bishop Perry was a priest within the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, serving first as associate pastor of St. Nicholas Parish followed by an assignment (1976) within the tribunal department of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, becoming Chief Judicial Officer of the Tribunal from 1983 until 1995. Bishop Perry then was assigned pastor of All Saints Church in Milwaukee in 1995 until his ordination as a bishop June 1998.

Perry was a professor of canon law at the Sacred Heart School of Theology in Hales Corners, Wisconsin 1981-1995. Since 1996 he was an instructor in canon law at both the Marquette University Law School and since 1997 at Mundelein Seminary.Mundelein, Illinois.

Auxiliary Bishop of Chicago

Perry was given the titular diocese of Lead on May 5, 1998. After his consecration as a bishop on June 29, 1998, Bishop Perry was appointed the episcopal vicar for Vicariate VI of the Archdiocese of Chicago} serving Cardinal Francis George, OMI the Archbishop of Chicago.

Membership and Appointments

In 2010, Bishop Perry was named by Cardinal Francis George to be the Diocesan Postulator for the sainthood cause of Fr. Augustus Tolton (1854-1897).

A member of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops he has served as chairman of the Committee on African American Catholics. He has also served on several other USCCB committees, including those for Education, Home Missions; the Ad Hoc Committee on Catholics' Use of Holy Scripture; the Secretariat for Family, Laity, Women and Youth; and the Ad Hoc Committee for a Plenary Council, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, the subcommittee for the Defense of Marriage and the subcommittee for Migrants, Refugees and Travelers.

Perry is vice-president of the National Black Catholic Congress's board. Since 1977 he has been a member of the Canon Law Society of America (CLSA). In 1998 he sat on the Board of Advisors of Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary. In addition, he is an episcopal liaison for Catechetics and Liturgical Training Publications (LTP) of the Archdiocese of Chicago, and is a judge sitting on the Ecclesiastical Court of Appeals for the dioceses in the state of Illinois.