Brooklyn priest to head bishops' ecumenical, interreligious office

Published: 2005-12-07

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Father James Massa, a professor at the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huntington, N.Y., will succeed Father Arthur L. Kennedy as executive director of the U.S. bishops' Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs in January. Msgr. William P. Fay, general secretary of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, announced the appointment Dec. 6. "Father Massa is a gifted scholar and a fine priest with significant ecumenical and pastoral experience," he said. "We are fortunate that he will direct an office whose mission is so vitally important to the life of the church." Father Massa, who pursued doctoral studies at Fordham University under now-Cardinal Avery Dulles, wrote his doctoral dissertation on "The Communion Theme in the Writings of Joseph Ratzinger," the German cardinal who became Pope Benedict XVI. He is currently writing a book on the ecclesiology of Pope Benedict and is a priest of the Diocese of Brooklyn, N.Y.

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