Joseph W. Tobin

Early life and education

Tobin was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1952, the oldest of the thirteen children of Joseph W. Tobin and Marie Terese Kerwin. He was baptized five days after his birth at the historic Church of the Most Holy Redeemer, founded and administered by the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (better known as the Redemptorist Fathers). He later attended the parochial school there.

Contents

• Cardinal designate joseph w tobin press conference
• Archbishop joseph w tobin keynote plenary presenter at the guest house leadership conference
• Early life and education
• Ordination and ministry
• Roman Curia Secretary CICLSAL
• Archbishop of Indianapolis
• Cardinal
• Archbishop of Newark
• References

By the time he had graduated, Tobin felt called to serve as a Catholic priest, and applied to the Redemptorists, by whom he was accepted as a candidate. He then attended St. Joseph's Preparatory College in Edgerton, Wisconsin, the Redemptorists' minor seminary. After graduating in 1970, he was received into the novitiate of the Congregation to begin his formation as a member. He made his temporary profession of religious vows as a member of the congregation on August 5, 1972 and his perpetual vows on August 21, 1976.

In 1975 Tobin gained a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Holy Redeemer College in Waterford, Wisconsin, after which he was sent to study at Mount St. Alphonsus Seminary in Esopus, New York, where he earned the degrees of Master in Religious Education (1977) and a Master of Divinity in Pastoral Theology (1979).

Ordination and ministry

Tobin was ordained a priest on June 1, 1978. The following year, he returned home when he was appointed the parochial vicar of Holy Redeemer Parish in Detroit. He was later named pastor there, serving from 1984 to 1990. From 1990 to 1991, he served as pastor of St. Alphonsus Parish in Chicago, Illinois. He served as an episcopal vicar for the Archdiocese of Detroit from 1980 to 1986; he also offered his collaboration to the local diocesan marriage tribunal.

Tobin was elected General Consultor of the Redemptorist Fathers in 1991 and on September 9, 1997 was elected Superior General, confirmed for another term in this post September 26, 2003. That same year he became Vice-President of the Union of Superiors General. He was also member of the Council for Relations between the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life and the International Union of Superiors General from 2001 to 2009.

In 2005, he participated in a synod of bishops in Rome, where he spent a week in a Spanish-language discussion group that included the Archbishop of Buenos Aires who later became Pope Francis and named Tobin a cardinal.

Tobin spent 2010 taking a sabbatical attached to Blackfriars Hall, Oxford, and staying with the De La Salle Brothers. He pursued his interest in the rise of secularisation and secular culture, attending seminars by the sociologist of religion and anthropologist Peter Clarke, studying at the Las Casas Institute and taking classes at Blackfriars.

Tobin speaks English, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese.

Roman Curia, Secretary, CICLSAL

On August 2, 2010 Tobin was appointed to the Curia post of secretary of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (CICLSAL) and titular Archbishop of Obba. Tobin was the second US cleric to hold the post. In May 2009 Tobin was named to oversee the professed men's element of the Apostolic Visitation of the Church in Ireland, scheduled for September 2010. He received his episcopal consecration in Rome on October 9, 2010. Tobin was told of his appointment two weeks before it was announced. He recalled that "I was painting my mom's house in Ontario when the phone rang. The voice on the other end said it was Cardinal Bertone, and my first thought was that it was a prank … you know, I thought maybe it was one of the Redemptorists fooling around. Quickly, though, I realized that it really was Bertone, and he said that the Holy Father wants you to do this. My first reaction was to tell him that off the top of my head, I could give him the names of five people much more qualified to do this job than I am. I was completely serious about it. But Cardinal Bertone said no, this is what the Holy Father wants. He said I could take a week to ten days to think about it, so I talked to my superiors, my closest friends in religious life, and my spiritual director".

Tobin said that "[his] hope is that the Vatican's relationship with the local churches can be a sort of creative tension. I think life without tension would be very boring and useless. We can't walk, we can't talk, we can't sing without tension. You need to have tension in your vocal chords and your back, let alone a guitar. However, tension can be destructive. The challenge is to recognise the diversity of gifts and the plurality of churches and the one spirit that unites us. And I think that is the adventure of a lifetime."

When Tobin arrived at CICLSAL, it was already conducting a visitation—a critical inspection of ministries and organization—of the 341 institutes of apostolic women religious in the United States. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) was conducting a doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), focused on theological orthodoxy. In December 2010 Tobin said that Rome needed to acknowledge the "depth of anger and hurt" provoked by a visitation, saying it illustrated the need for a "strategy of reconciliation" with women religious. The CDF issued its report on the LCWR in April 2012, and Tobin was reportedly unhappy both with its content and with the failure of the CDF to consult with him before releasing it. In August he publicly criticized the way his predecessor had managed the CICLSAL Apostolic Visitation—a separate event from the CDF investigation of LCWR—from the start: "I believe a visitation has to have a dialogical aspect, but the way this was structured at the beginning didn't really favour that."

Archbishop of Indianapolis

On October 18, 2012, Pope Benedict XVI reassigned Tobin from his Curia post to head the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Indianapolis, a Catholic community of 246,000. He was installed on December 3, 2012. His reassignment had been rumored since Tobin had made known his unhappiness with Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's highly critical report on the LCWR in the United States in April 2012.

In June 2014, Tobin warned that ideological polarization of American political life "helps to contribute to the balkanization of American Catholics into so-called right wing and left wing, or progressive and traditionalist, factions, who point fingers at each other". Speaking at a meeting of the College Theology Society he said that "In my opinion, finger pointing does a great harm to religious life because it makes us defensive" and "we feel constantly compelled to defend ourselves against other parties in the church."

In May 2016, Tobin was named to oversee the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, a religious community that a Vatican review had found in need of thorough-going reform.

Cardinal

On October 9, 2016, Pope Francis announced that Tobin would be made a cardinal in a papal consistory to be held on November 19, 2016. On that day he was made a Cardinal Priest and assigned the titular church of Santa Maria delle Grazie a Via Trionfale.

Archbishop of Newark

On November 7, Pope Francis named Tobin the Archbishop of Newark, a see which has, like Indianapolis, never before been headed by a cardinal until this year with Tobin's elevation and quick subsequent transfer. He was installed there on January 6, 2017.