Elwood’s Mary Ann Cockream loves to listen to Bishop Ronald A. Hicks’ homilies.
“I’ve been to several masses that he has celebrated, and he is an excellent homilist,” she said. “I’ve aways wanted to clap after his homilies.”
On Sunday, she got her chance. She clapped loudly along with hundreds of others after Hicks delivered his homily.
About 1,000 people applauded Hicks and gave him a standing ovation as he celebrated his final mass as the Diocese of Joliet’s bishop at St. Raymond in Joliet. Also present were roughly 100 priests from the diocese.
After the Mass, hundreds waited in a long line to have their photos taken with him.
Hicks is heading east to become the 11th Archbishop of New York, a position he was appointed to last month by Pope Leo XIV. Hicks will be installed on Friday, Feb. 6 at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and between now and then he will transition into that role.
Joliet Diocese officials say there is no announcement for neither an interim bishop nor a replacement and that those decisions are up to the Vatican.
Hicks has been Joliet’s bishop since 2020. During Hicks’ final homily as Joliet bishop, he talked about how throughout the years, he has asked people to pray for him, and he always prays for them.
“I have taken that commitment seriously each and every time,” he said. “Please know that your prayers for me are one of the greatest gifts you have given to me.
“Right now, at this farewell Mass … as all of you send me out to the Archdiocese of New York, this one last time I’m going to sincerely ask you for your prayers.”
“And know that when you are praying for me, I am going to be praying for all of you,” Hicks said.
Plainfield’s Laura Rogers said she was in need of some prayers when her sister, Jeanne Marie Billo, died in 2020, one year after her mother, Sharon Grill.
The family got to know Hicks when he spent three years at Elizabeth Seton in Orland Hills in the late 1990s.
Rogers said Hicks and Archbishop Jerome Listecki presided over Grill’s funeral Mass. And when no one from Billo’s church called back regarding prayers for her, Rogers turned to Hicks, who had just become the new bishop in Joliet.
“I texted Ron — we called him ‘Ron’ — and he came over and sat with us and prayed,” Rogers said. “And he also said her Mass.
“His family is beautiful. He is kind. What’s not to like about him?”
Sharon Grill’s husband, Keith Grill of St. John. Indiana, formerly of Orland Park, took a trip to El Salvador with Hicks before Hicks was ordained as a priest in 1994.
“He’s a very good man,” Grill said. “He is just a good genuine priest.”
Hicks was born in Harvey and grew up in South Holland. He attended St. Jude the Apostle Parish and grade school. Through a series of parish consolidations by the Chicago Archdiocese, St. Jude eventually merged with the pope’s home church, St. Mary of the Assumption in Riverdale, to become Christ Our Savior in South Holland.
Hicks graduated from Quigley Preparatory Seminary South in 1985 and, before being the top man in Joliet, served as an auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago from 2018-2020.
Pope Francis announced he named Hicks as the sixth bishop of the Joliet Diocese and he was installed at St. Raymond Sept. 29, 2020, an event he remembers well.
“It was at the height of COVID,” he told the crowd Sunday. “My installation Mass had 20% of this cathedral filled because of the social distancing restrictions. It was a lot different than what we see here today.
“I like this better.”
He was thrown a little with everyone wearing masks back then.
“I didn’t know if you were smiling or frowning,” he said, “I couldn’t tell if you were laughing or crying under those masks. But somehow, we got to know each other.
“Thanks be to God, we were able to take those masks off and we were able to see each other face to face.”
Jeff Vorva is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southown.