Pope Francis appoints new bishop to Diocese of Knoxville

Pope Francis on May 7, 2024, appointed Father James Mark Beckman, 61, a priest of the Diocese of Nashville, as the fourth bishop of the Diocese of Knoxville. / Credit: Diocese of Nashville

Rome Newsroom, May 7, 2024 / 11:50 am (CNA).

Pope Francis on Tuesday appointed a new bishop to the Diocese of Knoxville, Tennessee, following former Bishop Richard Stika’s resignation last year. 

The Holy See Press Office announced that Father James Mark Beckman, 61, will be installed as the new bishop of the diocese. The installation will occur in July. 

The bishopric since June 2023 has been under the care of Louisville Archbishop Shelton Fabre, who has served as apostolic administrator following Stika’s departure that month.

Beckman, a Tennessee native, has been a priest with the Diocese of Nashville since his ordination on July 13, 1990. He received a bachelor’s degree in history from St. Ambrose College in 1984 and a master’s degree in religious studies from the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium in 1988. 

Since his ordination to the priesthood Beckman has served in a variety of pastoral and educational roles in the Nashville Diocese.

He was assigned as associate pastor of Holy Rosary Church near Nashville and taught at the city’s Father Ryan High School, where he served as associate principal for pastoral affairs.

He subsequently served at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Springfield and St. Michael Mission Church in Cedar Hill. For several years he also served as director of the Diocesean Youth Office. 

Beckman’s appointment comes after a tumultuous few years in the eastern Tennessee diocese.

Stika, who was appointed to the diocese in 2009, was at the center of a scandal over the purported cover-up of the alleged abuse of a seminarian. He was also criticized over his leadership of the diocese. 

According to Catholic outlet the Pillar, in 2021 nearly a dozen Knoxville priests sent a letter to Cardinal (then Archbishop) Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the United States, asking for “merciful relief” from Stika’s leadership, arguing that it was “detrimental to priestly fraternity and even to our personal well-being.” 

Among other allegations, the priests alleged Stika had intimidated clergy in the diocese if he thought they spoke out publicly about misconduct.

In 2022 he was named in a lawsuit that accused him of protecting a seminarian accused of multiple counts of rape. The suit also claimed that the bishop attempted to intimidate an alleged victim, a parish organist, into keeping quiet about the alleged sexual assault and of having accused the alleged victim of being the perpetrator.

In November 2022 the Vatican sent two Virginia prelates — Arlington Bishop Michael Burbidge and Richmond Bishop Barry Knestout — for an apostolic visitation to the diocese. While the findings of the visitation were not made public, the Pillar reported that unnamed sources close to the Dicastery for Bishops said Pope Francis had decided to ask Stika for his resignation in light of the results of the investigation.

Pope Francis accepted Stika’s resignation on June 27, 2023. In a subsequent statement Stika expressed his gratitude to the pope for accepting his request, suggesting that he was resigning due to “life-threatening health issues.”