His Holiness, Pope Francis on Tuesday named Rev. Msgr. Michael F. Olson, 47, a priest of the Diocese of Fort Worth and currently the rector of Irving-based Holy Trinity Seminary, the fourth bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth.The announcement of the appointment was made by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States—the Vatican’s ambassador to the U.S.
Bishop-elect Olson will be ordained bishop and installed as Bishop of Fort Worth on January 29, 2014 at a 2 p.m. Mass in the Fort Worth Convention Center, 1201 Houston Street. He will become the second youngest bishop in the United States to lead a diocese. The youngest bishop is fellow seminary classmate Bishop Oscar Cantú of the Diocese of Las Cruces, New Mexico. Both are graduates of the St. Mary Seminary in Houston.
Bishop-elect Olson is the first priest of the Diocese of Fort Worth to be named a bishop. He will lead a fast-growing diocese of an estimated 710,000 Catholics in 90 parishes in the 28-county North Texas region.
He succeeds Bishop Kevin Vann who was appointed Bishop of Orange, California in September 2012 by Pope Benedict XVI.
Bishop-elect Olson has experience in parish service, seminarian formation and diocesan administration.
"I am very humbled and deeply moved by Pope Francis' appointment of me to serve as the Bishop of Fort Worth,” Bishop-elect Olson said. “In a very special way, I am delighted to return home to the Diocese of Fort Worth to serve the priests, deacons, religious, and all of the faithful as their bishop."
Bishop-elect Olson, a native of Illinois, was ordained a priest of the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth on June 3, 1994 by the late Bishop Joseph Delaney at St. Patrick Cathedral. His first assignment was as the parochial vicar—an associate pastor—of St. Michael Parish in Bedford where he served from July 1994 through June 1997.
Bishop-elect Olson was recipient of the Basselin Scholarship at the Catholic University of America where he earned his bachelor and master degrees in philosophy in 1988 and 1989, respectively. In 1997, he entered St. Louis University Center for Health Care Ethics for doctoral studies and continued his studies there through June 2001. From July 2001 to May 2006, he served as formation adviser at St. Mary’s Seminary in Houston. In July 2006, he became pastor of St. Peter the Apostle Parish in Fort Worth where he served until June 2008. Concurrently, he served as the Vicar General in the administration of Bishop Vann. In July 2008, he was assigned as the rector of Holy Trinity Seminary in Irving where he currently serves. While rector Bishop-elect Olson earned his doctorate in moral theology at Academia Alfonsiana in Rome. On May 6, 2010 Pope Benedict XVI granted him the Papal Honor of Chaplain to His Holiness with the title of “monsignor.” He has served as the community representative to the Houston-based University of Texas Medical Center’s Ethics Committee for Research Involving Human Subjects.
Bishop-elect Olson was born on June 29, 1966 in Park Ridge, Illinois, the son of Ronald G. and Janice Fetzer Olson. He has three sisters, Mary Elizabeth Rogers, Patricia Tucker and Lizbeth Schweitzer. He was reared in Des Plaines, Illinois, where his family was a member of St. Mary Parish. He received his high school diploma from Quigley Preparatory Seminary North in 1984 and became a seminarian the same year for the Archdiocese of Chicago. When Bishop-elect Olson’s family moved to Fort Worth as part of the corporate relocation of GTE/DC, seminarian Olson transferred to the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth.
The new bishop will be ordained and installed Wednesday, January 29, 2014 at a 2 p.m. Mass in the Fort Worth Convention Center. Bishop-elect Olson will be ordained by Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller. Archbishop Viganò, representing His Holiness Pope Francis, will participate in the ordination.
