Denver Newsroom, Sep 18, 2020 / 09:25 am
Two officials of the U.S. bishops' conference will be candidates to replace Msgr. Brian Bransfield, the outgoing general secretary of the conference.
Monsignor Jeff Burrill and Fr. Michael Fuller will be on the bishops' conference ballot in November for the general secretary position, multiple sources have told CNA. Bransfield, elected in 2015, is completing a five-year term in the position.
Burrill is now a deputy to Bransfield, serving as associate general secretary of the conference. A priest of La Crosse, the priest earned a licentiate in theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas in Rome, has served as a formator at the Pontifical North American College, a seminary in Rome, and has worked at the bishops' conference since 2016.
One conference staffer told CNA that Burrill is regarded within the bishops' conference as a "common-sense guy" with pastoral sensibilities, others speculated that if elected, Burrill might seek to streamline and simplify some of the procedural and bureaucratic aspects of the conference's day-to-day operations.