SAN ANTONIO – Pope Leo XIV has appointed the Most Reverend José Arturo Cepeda as auxiliary bishop of San Antonio, transferring him from the Archdiocese of Detroit, Vatican officials announced Tuesday.
The appointment was made public in Washington by Msgr. Veeslav Tumir, chargé d’affaires of the Apostolic Nunciature, during the temporary absence of Cardinal Christophe Pierre, the papal ambassador to the United States.
Bishop Cepeda, 56, was born in San Luis Potosí, Mexico, and immigrated to the United States with his family as a teenager. He was raised and educated in San Antonio before pursuing theological studies in Rome at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas, where he received both a licentiate and a doctorate in sacred theology.
He was ordained to the priesthood in 1996 at his home parish, St. Mary Magdalen in San Antonio, by Archbishop Patricio Flores, and went on to serve the Archdiocese there for 15 years. In 2011, Pope Benedict XVI named him an auxiliary bishop of Detroit. At 41, he became the youngest Catholic bishop in the United States.
Before his episcopal appointment in Detroit, Bishop Cepeda had served as rector of Assumption Seminary in San Antonio. In Detroit, he oversaw the Central Region of the archdiocese as episcopal vicar and regional moderator.
The Archdiocese of San Antonio encompasses more than 23,000 square miles, with a population of nearly 2.8 million, of whom about 1.1 million identify as Catholic.