VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV, history’s first American pope, on Thursday made his first American bishop appointment as he named Bishop Michael Pham as bishop of San Diego, California.
Pham, 58, is currently an auxiliary bishop in the diocese. He fills the vacancy created when Pope Francis named Cardinal Robert McElroy archbishop of Washington D.C. earlier this year.
Pham, who was born in Da Nang, Vietnam, was ordained a priest in the San Diego diocese in 1999 and was made a bishop in 2023. He was in charge of programming for the dioceses’ ethnic groups and as of March had been the main diocesan administrator. The diocese of San Diego counts about 1.3 million Catholics in a total population of about 3.5 million people, according to the U.S. Catholic bishops conference.
Prior to his election May 8, the former Cardinal Robert Prevost headed the Vatican’s bishops office and in that capacity would have reviewed and vetted Pham’s file.