WASHINGTON (May 24, 2005)—Pope Benedict XVI has accepted the resignation of Bishop Raymond J. Boland of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Missouri. The Coadjutor Bishop, Robert W. Finn, now becomes Ordinary of the See.

Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, made the announcement.

Raymond J. Boland was born in County Tipperary, Ireland, February 8, 1932. He studied at All Hallows Seminary, Dublin, and was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Washington, June 16, 1957.

Bishop Boland was named Bishop of Birmingham, January 28, 1988. He was appointed Bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph on June 22, 1993.

Robert W. Finn, named Coadjutor Bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph on March 9, 2004, was born in St. Louis, April 2, 1953. He studied at St. Louis Preparatory Seminary, Cardinal Glennon College Seminary, and the North American College, Rome, where he pursued a Licentiate in Theology at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelicum.

Ordained a priest of the St. Louis archdiocese, July 7, 1979, he served as an educator, as a parochial vicar in parishes of the archdiocese, as archdiocesan director, Continuing Formation of Priests, and as editor of the archdiocesan newspaper, The St. Louis Review.

Redesignated the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph in 1956, the diocese comprises 27 counties in northern and western Missouri. It has a Catholic population of about 144,500 in a total population of approximately 1.4 million.

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