In wide-ranging interview, Detroit's archbishop shares joys, challenges and hopes for a vibrant Church on mission
DETROIT — To say it’s been an eventful year for Archbishop Edward J. Weisenburger would be — well, a bit of an understatement.
It started with a phone call from the papal nuncio in February 2025. In the blink of an eye — and with a trusting “yes” — his life changed, sending him 2,000 miles across the country from Tucson to Detroit, where he’d become the Motor City’s new archbishop on March 18, 2025.
From there, things haven’t really slowed down.
“Oh, there have been a lot of joys in the last year,” Archbishop Weisenburger said in a recent video interview with Detroit Catholic on the occasion of his first anniversary as Detroit’s chief shepherd. “I don’t think any year of my life will ever compare with 2025.”
Besides the obvious adjustments — getting used to a new city, a new climate, and a new home — Archbishop Weisenburger’s first year in Detroit has been a whirlwind of activity, from events, liturgies and pastoral initiatives to meeting new communities and people — including a new pope.
“There’s a lot going on in Detroit,” Archbishop Weisenburger laughed. “Living the liturgical cycle, digging ever more deeply into parish life, schools, Catholic Charities — it’ll keep me busy.”
The installation liturgies at the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament in March 2025 set the stage for what Archbishop Weisenburger described as an “incredibly warm welcome” from Detroiters, whom he’s gotten to know much better in the past 12 months.
Archbishop Weisenburger said he’s enjoyed getting to know southeast Michigan and its people, as well as the many cultural institutions, icons and experiences that make the state unique.
“We Detroiters are tough; we don’t give in easily, and I like that,” Archbishop Weisenburger said when asked what he’d learned about Detroiters. “We rise from the ashes. When you stop to think what this city has been through, and especially the last 60 years, where we are today is phenomenal.”
During his first year, the archbishop visited Mackinac Island, which hosts an annual Knights of Columbus convention each year, as well as many of Detroit’s museums and cultural institutions such as the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History, which he called “hidden gems.”
“I’ve been told (the Detroit Institute of Arts) is one of the top 10 museums in the nation. I almost felt like I was walking through the Vatican Museums, because I didn’t expect to see that much religious art,” he said. “It was magnificent, and I was bowled over.”
Detroit’s Catholic architecture is similarly breathtaking, he said, from the Art Deco uniqueness of the National Shrine of the Little Flower Basilica to the Gothic grandeur of the Basilica of Ste. Anne, St. Joseph Shrine and others.
“I think those who are from here in the city or in Michigan might presume that’s the way it is everywhere. That is not the way it is everywhere,” the archbishop said. “Walking into so many of our churches for the first time has really been a moving experience. I wish people could experience them the way I did for the first time, and just be moved by the glory of what we encounter.”
Besides his installation in Detroit, Archbishop Weisenburger cited as a particular joy the opportunity to travel to Rome in June to receive his pallium from Pope Leo XIV, who was elected to the papacy just two months after Archbishop Weisenburger arrived in Michigan.
“Going to Rome with my family and friends and a group of priests from here in Detroit to receive the pallium from the Holy Father and meet him for the first time, and to chat with him for a minute or maybe longer, that was a wonderful, wonderful experience that will live on forever in my memory,” Archbishop Weisenburger said.
The December pastoral visit of Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, during the midst of a post-war humanitarian crisis in Gaza was another significant highlight, the archbishop said.
The cardinal’s visit to Detroit, arranged through a partnership between the Archdiocese of Detroit and the Chaldean Eparchy of St. Thomas the Apostle, capped a year in which local Catholics raised more than $1.1 million to support suffering communities in the Holy Land.
“The visit of the patriarch from Jerusalem — I don’t know that we grasp just how significant that was, that he knows there are people in America who stand with him and with his people and the people of Gaza, and that we gave from ourselves for them and stand in solidarity with them,” Archbishop Weisenburger said. “That was an incredible experience.”
The first year in Detroit hasn’t been without challenges, Archbishop Weisenburger said. The archdiocese’s two-year restructuring process is a daily reminder of the difficult work ahead.
“Life is built around challenges, but it’s those challenges that carve us into the saints God wants us to be,” Archbishop Weisenburger said. “I have great hope with the restructuring, but it is a challenge because it will be hard.”
Archbishop Weisenburger said he deeply understands the painful reality of right-sizing the archdiocese and the sacrifices that come with it.
Reflecting upon his experience as bishop of Salina, Kansas, the archbishop recalled visiting the tiny parish in Catharine, Kansas, where his mother was born and his family had attended during his younger years. During his mother’s youth, the town had about 500 people, but the population had since dwindled to fewer than 100.
“It’s such a sacred place for me,” he said. “All throughout my childhood and young adult years, that’s where we would go every year or two, and I felt more grounded in that church. Two blocks away is where my grandparents were buried, aunts and uncles. It’s the beating pulse of my history in Catholicism. And I remember thinking one time as a bishop there, ‘What if I had to close it?’
“I get it,” the archbishop said. “For us as Catholics, because of our theology and our liturgy and our faith, it’s not just bricks and mortar. It’s weddings, funerals, baptisms — it’s life lived. It’s woven into the bricks and mortar.”
As sobering and difficult as the archdiocese’s restructuring process is, however, “it’s also an opportunity,” the archbishop continued.
Shortly after arriving in Detroit, Archbishop Weisenburger recalled a conversation with a seminarian at Sacred Heart Major Seminary, who stopped him in the hallway and offered words of encouragement.
“He said, ‘Archbishop, thank you so much for doing this restructuring. My brother seminarians and I were wondering what it was going to be like spending the next 50 years of our lives slowly closing down churches and experiencing failure,’” he said. “It was like a gut punch for me. He didn’t mean it to be, but it was so sobering. When I was in seminary, I was dreaming of all the wonderful things I would be doing for God’s people.”
The goal of the restructuring is ultimately to shape a Church that is vibrantly alive — not just for future priests, but for everyone, he said.
“Jesus did not call us to take care of museums. He called us to save souls,” he said. “We have to be willing in faith to move forward so that we can go back to being an evangelizing people.”
Amid the challenges, there are budding signs of hope, he added. This Easter, nearly 1,500 people will be received into the Church in the Archdiocese of Detroit, the most in more than two decades.
“Young people today, and young adults, too, are really asking the deep questions that every human being needs to ask,” the archbishop said. “Recognizing the poverty of relationships today in our culture, young people are saying, ‘We need to do something different. This is not working.’ They’re looking, and I’m thrilled to say we have the answer.”
Since becoming Detroit’s archbishop, Archbishop Weisenburger has expressed a particular closeness with the poor and suffering, lending his support to housing and humanitarian projects to aid Detroit’s homeless and low-income populations, and urging compassion for those in need.
Along with his brother bishops, Archbishop Weisenburger has also called for a more merciful approach to U.S. immigration enforcement, urging government leaders to respect the dignity of migrants while acknowledging the need for secure borders.
“It’s so painful, because I take very seriously the Gospel. When Jesus says, ‘What you do to the least among you, you do to me,’ he was not speaking figuratively. He meant it,” Archbishop Weisenburger said. “I think we’re going to have to respond to Him one day with how we treated the humblest, the poorest among us.”
Archbishop Weisenburger noted the history of America includes many unfortunate examples in which immigrants have been vilified and felt unwelcome, including Irish, Italians and even Catholics themselves.
“It happened to us. We forget that, but Catholics were deeply discouraged from coming to America. They really didn’t want us here,” Archbishop Weisenburger said.
As a former southern border bishop, Archbishop Weisenburger said his own thinking has been formed by his encounters with migrants, but primarily by the teaching of the Gospel, which has been compassionately reinforced by recent popes, he said.
“It wasn’t just Pope Francis. Pope John Paul II, Pope Paul VI before him, and Pope Benedict, they’ve all spoken about it,” the archbishop said. “Pope Leo is continuing that tradition of focusing on the poor.”
“In America, we tend to look at immigration as either open borders and everybody comes in, or slam the doors shut,” he added. “It does not have to be those extremes. We can have a sane respect for our borders and at the same time be the American citizens we have always been who welcome the world’s tired and hungry and poor.”
As the leader of 900,000 Catholics in southeast Michigan, Archbishop Weisenburger has made it a point to keep in regular contact with the local faithful, both through pastoral visits to parishes and schools and through a weekly video homily series, which to date has received more than 300,000 views.
Archbishop Weisenburger said that although he’s never considered himself a teacher — “I’d starve to death if I ever had a classroom,” he joked — one of the greatest joys of being a priest is breaking open the word of God for the faithful.
“I really love breaking open the Scriptures,” he said. “The Gospel is who we are, and the more we pour ourselves into it, I think, the more we fashion ourselves into saints God wants us to be.”
The weekly homily series is a chance to dive deeper into the mysteries of the Catholic faith, he said, and connect with people in an authentic, meaningful way.
As he moves into year two and beyond, Archbishop Weisenburger said he hopes to have more opportunities to visit parishes and schools, work with Detroit’s seminary and Catholic Charities, and continue to build relationships.
In other words, he’s focused on keeping the momentum going — for the Church of today and for the next generation.
“I would say year one has been incredible,” he concluded. “I don’t think I’ll ever have a year of my life like 2025. I look forward to the way the Holy Spirit is breathing through us and strengthening us and fashioning us into the people of God. And I think 2026 will hold blessings of its own.”
“I think our future is bright,” he said.
