Richard Henning
Richard Garth Henning was born October 17, 1964, in Rockville Centre, New York, the eldest of five children of a firefighter father and a nurse mother. He grew up in the parish of Holy Name of Mary, attended Chaminade High School in Mineola, and earned bachelor's and master's degrees in history from St. John's University in Queens before preparing for the priesthood at the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huntington. He was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Rockville Centre on May 30, 1992.
Henning is a Scripture scholar by training, with a licentiate in biblical theology from the Catholic University of America and a doctorate from the Angelicum in Rome. He taught sacred Scripture at the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception from 2002, served as its rector from 2012, and later led the diocese's clergy-formation institute. Fluent in English, Spanish, and Italian, he is described by colleagues as an academic, mild-mannered pastor who deliberately avoids 'liberal/conservative' framing and emphasizes unity, healing, and the Eucharist.
Pope Francis appointed him auxiliary bishop of Rockville Centre in 2018, then coadjutor bishop of Providence, Rhode Island, in 2022; he became Bishop of Providence on May 1, 2023. Barely fifteen months later, on August 5, 2024, Francis named him Archbishop of Boston, succeeding Cardinal Seán Patrick O'Malley; he was installed as the seventh Archbishop of Boston on October 31, 2024, at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. He received the pallium from Pope Leo XIV in June 2026 and remains Archbishop of Boston (not a cardinal) as of mid-2026.
Archbishop Henning's personal record toward the Traditional Latin Mass is, honestly, close to a blank page. In his roughly eighteen months as Bishop of Providence (2023–2024) he took no documented action for or against the traditional liturgy; the diocese's existing provision — including the FSSP apostolate at St. Mary's on Broadway, established by his predecessor Bishop Tobin in 2018 — simply continued. In Boston, where he was installed in October 2024, he has likewise issued no known decree, restriction, or act of preservation touching the TLM through mid-2026.
What survives in Boston survives because of Cardinal O'Malley, not Henning. It was O'Malley who kept the Tridentine Mass alive after Traditionis Custodes, making 'no changes to the current practice' and preserving the archdiocese's principal traditional site, Mary Immaculate of Lourdes in Newton Upper Falls — a diocesan mission parish. Henning has left that arrangement undisturbed, but leaving a good thing alone is not the same as fighting for it.
The honest verdict is that it is too early to judge. The evidence points to a temperate, scholarly, unity-minded pastor who dislikes ideological labels, stays out of liturgical culture wars, and was trusted by both Pope Francis and Pope Leo XIV — none of which tells us how he would act if pressed to tighten or defend the old Mass. Traditional Catholics in Boston currently enjoy continuity, but they enjoy it on inherited terms and at a new archbishop's discretion. Until Henning speaks or acts on the question himself, the right posture is watchful prudence — neither alarm nor celebration.