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Pope Leo appoints 10th bishop of the Diocese of Belleville73%
By Mike Koziatek0%
3/13/2026, 9:09:21 PM
Topics: Metro East Coverage
BS Summary: This article contains 9 faulty reasoning types, including In-Group Bias, Appeal to Authority, and Optimism Bias, with Self-Serving Bias as the most egregious example at 24.3% saturation with 221 hits. Analysis detected 910 faulty-reasoning hits from 908 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 65.5% and a BS Rank of 73% (4,675 of 16,813 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 72.20% of the article peer group.
The Rev. Godfrey Mullen, the Benedictine monk who has been serving as administrator for the Belleville Diocese and as rector of the Cathedral of St. Peter in Belleville, will be installed as the new bishop of the diocese on May 1, according to an appointment by Pope Leo the XIV announced Friday by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
It was Mullen who conducted a news conference in his home parish Friday to announce his new job as the 10th bishop in the history of the Belleville Diocese.
After his ordination on May 1, Mullen said he would prefer to be known as “Bishop Godfrey” instead of the common practice of priests using their last name when they are appointed a bishop.
Mullen, 60, grew up in Salem, so he has the assignment of leading his home diocese where there are 127,000 Catholics and 99 parishes.
He noted that he was born in Alton in the Springfield Diocese, and not Salem as stated in the bishops’ announcement.
Mullen received the news of Pope Leo’s decision last Saturday from Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the apostolic nuncio to the United States.
In a statement read during the news conference, which was livestreamed on the St. Peter’s Facebook page, Mullen said he told Pierre, “I have accepted many assignments from abbots and bishops under whom I have served and have nearly always grown to love those assignments, I trust that pattern will continue.”
Cardinal Blase J. Cupich of the Archdiocese of Chicago had been expected to attend the news conference to announce Mullen’s appointment, but his flight to St. Louis was canceled Friday morning because of 60-mph winds in Chicago, Mullen said.
Mullen added that the combination of the flight cancellation and his position as diocesan administrator created “a little bit of an odd situation” that resulted in Mullen reading the statement that Cupich would have read.
“So I get to, I guess, introduce myself,” he said at the beginning of the news conference.
Mullen has been diocesan administrator since May 9 in Belleville after Archbishop Michael McGovern was appointed archbishop in Omaha, Nebraska, by the late Pope Francis last March.
Mullen has been a Benedictine monk of St. Meinrad Archabbey in Indiana since the late 1980s.
Mullen’s family moved to Salem when he was an infant.
“As a son of this diocese since I was 9 months old, I have always been fascinated by the way Christ is present in his wonderful people in Southern Illinois,” Mullen said in his opening statement.
“With my parents being intimately involved in the work of Saint Theresa of Avila Parish in Salem, I grew up knowing Diocesan Priests and Precious Blood and Felician Sisters.”
Mullen said that it is “uncommon” that a diocesan administrator is appointed bishop of the same diocese and that he accepts his new assignment as “God’s plan.”
“In the immigrant, the stranger, the incarcerated, the mentally ill, the alienated, the hungry, the homeless, the elderly and the young, and from East St. Louis to Mount Carmel, from Kinmundy to Cairo, in every place here, we can find Christ if we look for him with faith and hope, with the genuine charity that is rightly always our way of life,” he said.
In a question-and-answer session after his opening statement, Mullen addressed whether he had any “trepidation” about becoming bishop of his home diocese.
Mullen said his experience gives him an insight into the issues facing the diocese but acknowledged that it could limit his vision, so he has been listening to the opinions of others.
“And what I have found is that embracing the input of many people, while it’s a little bit difficult sometimes to bring all that together to a way forward, at the same time it has been for me a wonderfully rejuvenating experience,” he said.
“There is trepidation, but it has far less to do with being a native son of the diocese and far more to do with the recognition that helping people to Heaven is my job now and not just 1,250 people at the Cathedral of St. Peter but all 127,000 plus in the Diocese of Belleville.”
Career highlights
Mullen, who was born on Jan. 22, 1966, studied at St. Meinrad College in Indiana, where he received a bachelor’s degree in history in 1988, a master’s degree in theology in 1991 and a master's of divinity in 1994, according to a news release from the bishops' conference.
“He received a Ph.D. in liturgical studies from The Catholic University of America (2003).
Father Mullen made his solemn monastic profession with the Order of Saint Benedict on August 15, 1992, and he was ordained to the priesthood on June 5, 1994,” the news release states.
“Bishop-elect Mullen’s pastoral assignments include: professor of liturgy at St. Meinrad College in Indiana; rector of St. Benedict Cathedral in Evansville, Indiana; rector of Saint Peter Cathedral in Belleville, Illinois; pastor of Blessed Sacrament parish, and of Queen of Peace parish in Belleville, Illinois.”
He also has served as vicar general of the Diocese of Belleville.
Bishops of Belleville
* John Janssen (1887-1913)
* Henry J. Althoff (1914-47)
* Albert Rudolph Zuroweste (1948-76)
* William Michael Cosgrove (1976-81)
* John Nicholas Wurm (1981-84)
* James Patrick Keleher (1984-93), appointed archbishop of Kansas City, Kansas
* Wilton Daniel Gregory (1994–05), appointed archbishop of Atlanta
* Edward Kenneth Braxton (2005–20)
* Michael McGovern (2020–25), appointed archbishop of Omaha
* Godfrey Mullen (2026-)
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