Message From The Archbishop

The Most Rev. Thomas G. Wenski
Archbishop of Miami

Archbishop Thomas G. Wenski, born in West Palm Beach on October 18, 1950, grew up in Lake Worth, Florida where he attended Catholic school at his home parish, Sacred Heart. He studied at St. John Vianney Minor Seminary in Miami and St. Vincent de Paul Major Seminary in Boynton Beach and was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Miami on May 15, 1976. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy (1972) and a Master of Divinity (1975) from the Boynton Beach Seminary and a Master of Arts in Sociology from Fordham University in New York.

He served three years as associate pastor of Corpus Christi Church, a mainly Hispanic parish in Miami, before being assigned, in 1979, to the newly established Haitian Apostolate of the Archdiocese. He was the associate director and then director of the Pierre Toussaint Haitian Catholic Center in Miami’s Little Haiti section while serving concurrently as pastor of three Haitian mission parishes in the archdiocese: Notre-Dame d’Haiti in Miami, Divine Mercy in Fort Lauderdale, and St. Joseph in Pompano Beach. Throughout the early 1980s, he also conducted a circuit-riding ministry to Haitian Catholic communities as far south as Homestead, as far north as Fort Pierce, and as far west as Immokalee.

In January 1996, then Father Wenski was appointed the Archdiocese Director of Catholic Charities, one of the largest Catholic social service agencies in the United States. In this capacity, he helped forge a collaborative relationship with Caritas Cuba, the social service arm of the Catholic Church in Cuba. Since early 1996 he has traveled to Cuba on many occasions on behalf of the Church.

Appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Miami on June 24, 1997, he was ordained to the episcopacy on September 3, 1997. Pope John Paul II appointed Bishop Wenski as coadjutor bishop of the Diocese of Orlando on July 1, 2003, and he assumed the role of the fourth bishop of Orlando on November 13, 2004. On April 20, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI appointed him the fourth Archbishop of Miami and Metropolitan of the Province of Miami (which includes the seven dioceses of the State of Florida). He was installed as Archbishop of Miami on June 1, 2010.