Catholic Bishop Wester ‘sad’ to leave Utah, takes immigration fight to New Mexico

Bishop John C. Wester has spent eight years in Mormon-dominant Utah, counseling, confirming and christening Catholics, officiating at Masses, fighting to end poverty, traversing the globe on assignments, penning opinion pieces and speaking forcefully about social justice.

In all of that busyness, one overriding Wester concern stands out: immigration reform.

Now the charismatic 64-year-old cleric, who has been tapped as the new archbishop of Santa Fe, will be going to a state that shares a border with Mexico, where Catholics make up a quarter of the populace and where heated debates about the rights of immigrants, legal or not, have become commonplace.

The Vatican announced Monday that Wester, who was installed as Utah's ninth Catholic bishop on March 14, 2007, will assume his new post in New Mexico on June 4.

"I am feeling sad. I thought I might retire from Salt Lake City, but I am willing to serve anywhere I am asked," Wester told The Salt Lake Tribune on Monday evening. "I ask priests to move when they don't want to. Now I have to take some of my own medicine."

Santa Fe's retiring archbishop, Michael Sheehan, said a dose of Wester is just what his flock needs.

"He will be such a perfect fit for our church here," Sheehan told those attending an Albuquerque news conference streamed live Monday on television station KOAT.

Sheehan said Wester was the clergyman he wanted as his replacement.

"I did everything I could to encourage God," Sheehan explained. "I even did some old special things to get our Lord to go along with it, and I talked to a couple cardinals, too."

Wester said his first thoughts when contacted by Pope Francis' representative in the United States, Papal Nuncio Carlo Maria Vigano, were what he will leave behind.

"I have dear friends in the Diocese of Salt Lake City," Wester said, adding that his emotions ran from shock to wonderment to fear.

In the end, he said, he realized all is within God's providence. "It's all about God. It's not about me. ... It's about service to God's people."

Utah is a beautiful place, he said, with a "grace-filled diocese."

Sheehan noted that Wester has made friends among Beehive State Mormons and told him, "We have Mormons here, too."

Wester's Utah successor likely will not be appointed for several months. However, a seven-member, clerical panel will meet soon to elect an interim administrator for the Salt Lake City Diocese.

Called in California • Growing up in a close-knit Catholic family in San Francisco, Wester left home at age 13 for St. Joseph's Seminary in Menlo Park, Calif., to begin a 12-year program to become a priest — four years of high school and two years of college, followed by six at nearby St. Patrick's Seminary. Eventually, he earned two graduate degrees, in counseling and spirituality.

"One clear way of knowing if you're doing the right thing is if it makes you happy," Wester said in 2007. "I can honestly say each day of my priesthood is happier than the last."

In the San Francisco Archdiocese, the young priest had an array of assignments — assisting archbishops, teaching high school music and English, listening to abuse victims, visiting death-row inmates at San Quentin, meeting with Buddhists in a joint project on prayer and assessing the needs of refugees.

As the chief shepherd of Utah's 300,000 Catholics, Wester became an instant leader in the state's religious community and a national force as communications director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and head of the group's committee on migration.

Proceeding down the aisle of downtown Salt Lake City's exquisite Cathedral of the Madeleine for his 2007 installation, Wester winked and smiled at family members in attendance as he sprinkled holy water on 1,500 invited guests, including LDS Church and government officials, more than 50 cardinals and bishops from throughout the United States, as well as dozens of Utah priests, deacons, seminarians and nuns.

Wester then took off running — honing his Spanish, speaking with humility and winning friends everywhere he went.

Leading on immigration • In fall 2009, Wester led a fact-finding trip to Zimbabwe and South Africa as head of the U.S. bishops' committee on migration.

"God weeps. It's a sadness beyond description," he said at the time. "We have to support reform and get people what they need."

Dee Rowland, former government liaison for the Salt Lake City Diocese, is sad to see Wester go, especially considering she and her husband, John Rowland, consider him a friend.

"But I'm also celebrating the appropriateness of his appointment to a border diocese," she said Monday. "That's very wise of the pope."

Rowland noted that Wester has helped shape the conversation in Utah on immigration, including among leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"His emphasis on the human side of immigration … certainly influenced everyone," she said, "and was influential in softening Utah's approach on immigration issues."

Wester was a leading architect of the landmark Utah Compact, which called for humane treatment of immigrants, including seeking to keep families together and focusing deportation on serious criminals instead of those with just civil violations of immigration law.

In 2011, he and other dignitaries met with President Barack Obama and Cabinet leaders about the document, which was signed by a range of Utah religious, business and community leaders. The LDS Church endorsed the pact but did not sign it.

The U.S. bishops' continued call for comprehensive immigration reform is not going away, Wester said during Monday's live-streamed news conference. "It's far, far more than a political issue. It's a human issue, a moral issue, and we have an obligation to address it."

Wester has encountered his share of battles on the hot-button topic.

When the Utah Legislature passed a guest-worker program for undocumented immigrants in 2011, Dee Rowland recalled, Wester refused to attend Gov. Gary Herbert's celebratory news conference.

The bill was unconstitutional, Rowland insisted, and fell short of what Wester and other faith and business leaders had been urging.

"He never shied away," she said, "from speaking out about the Catholic position on issues."

Other social-justice issues • With Wester's blessing, Rowland represented the diocese at anti-death-penalty protests and vigils leading up to Utah's execution of Ronnie Lee Gardner in 2010.

Wester himself criticized capital punishment at one such rally, saying the punishment "diminishes us and erodes our respect for the sanctity of all human life. ... Executing criminals will not overcome crime nor will it restore the lives of the innocent victims."

Just this spring, Wester lamented that Herbert signed a bill bringing the firing squad back to Utah.

"It seems as if our government leaders have substituted state legislation for the law of God," he said. "They argue that, because executions are lawful, they are then moral. This is not so."

In a 2011 interview, Wester said the Catholic Church is not a political-action committee. "We only get involved in those issues involved in the common good, social justice and those ... we believe Christ is calling us to."

Last winter, Wester was among the religious leaders urging lawmakers to approve Healthy Utah, the governor's proposed alternative to Medicaid expansion for poor people.

He also cultivated friendships with leaders of other faiths, including the Salt Lake City-based LDS Church.

"We have enjoyed a wonderful relationship with him, and many LDS Church leaders consider him a trusted confidant and dear friend," Mormon spokeswoman Kristen Howey said. "Bishop Wester has been a strong advocate in Utah on many critical issues that impact our communities and families. He has been a powerful role model and partner in helping the poor and lifting those in need. His appointment in New Mexico will bless the lives of the people he serves there, and we will greatly miss him here in Salt Lake City." Utah Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox has worked closely with Wester on a variety of policy issues, including poverty, heath care and homelessness.

The bishop is "wonderfully compassionate and incredibly articulate," Cox said. "He has a way of expressing what everyone else is thinking. ... He could bring people of all faiths together to work on the issues we face as a community."

On top of that, Cox said, Wester could "disagree without being disagreeable. He was always respectful, even of those who did not see things the way he did."

Friend to other faiths • The Rev. Michael Imperiale, whose First Presbyterian Church sits just east of the Cathedral of the Madeleine on South Temple, has found Wester to be "thoughtful, quiet, peaceful and a good neighbor."

The Catholic bishop is "a great encourager," Imperiale said. "He speaks well of all the people in his life. ... I'm sure he gets lots of requests to meet people one on one or in groups, but he never seems like he's in a hurry. He always has time for you."

Wester also is a "bridge builder," the Presbyterian pastor said. "Although he is the head of the Catholic community, he doesn't seem insulated from others or exclusively Catholic."

Pope Francis has made it clear that he does not want bishops who see themselves as "princes of the church," explained the Rev. Thomas Reese, senior analyst for National Catholic Reporter.

Rather, Reese said, the pontiff is seeking "shepherds who smell like their flock."

After making that point during a January speech in Salt Lake City, Reese went up to Wester, whom had he met earlier, put his nostrils up to the bishop and declared: "He passes."

The gregarious commenter found the Utah bishop to be personable and open, with obvious pastoral and communication ability and no hint of "clericalism."

Clearly, Reese said, that's why he was named the U.S. bishops' communications director.

"Even the bishops recognize his skills," the analyst said. "That is why they put him in charge of media relations."

Wester's appointment as archbishop, Reese added, "is a sign that he's the kind of bishop the pope is looking for."

For his part, Wester, the Bay Area native, mentioned Monday that the famous explorer-priests Dominguez and Escalante, who left Santa Fe in 1776, traveled through Utah and tried to reach California.

"I am like the Franciscans coming in the opposite direction," Wester said, "from California, through Utah to Santa Fe."

Kristen Moulton and Bob Mims contributed to this story.

pstack@sltrib.com