The Roman Catholic bishop of Knoxville, Richard Stika, has resigned after several turbulent years during which hundreds of parishioners called for his removal and after several priests raised concerns to the Vatican about his leadership.
Stika has served as bishop since 2009 for the East Tennessee diocese, which also includes Chattanooga and Johnson City.
Archbishop of Louisville Shelton J. Fabre will serve as administrator until a new bishop is installed, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops announced Tuesday.
“People will speculate on why I am doing this,” Stika, 65, wrote in an email Tuesday announcing his retirement to priests, deacons and other diocesean figures.
In explaining the resignation he submitted to Pope Francis, Stika noted serious health issues he has recently faced and public criticism of his leadership.
“I would be less than honest if I didn’t admit that some of this has weighed on me physically and emotionally,” Stika wrote. “For these reasons, I asked the Holy Father for relief from my responsibilities as a diocesan bishop.”
One of Stika’s most vocal detractors has been Susan Vance of the Tennessee chapter of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. She was skeptical of Stika’s suggestion that he was retiring largely of his own volition and for health reasons.
“Do not be fooled,” she wrote in an email Tuesday morning. “He leaves in disgrace.”
According to the Association of Catholic Priests, the normal retirement age for Catholic priests is 75.
The third and longest-serving bishop of the Knoxville diocese, Stika has presided over the ordination of 24 priests, the construction of a new cathedral in Knoxville and convert rates that one study early in his tenure found were among the highest in the nation. By email Tuesday, he told the Chattanooga Times Free Press the diocese during his 14 years has been highly successful.
Staff Photo by Robin Rudd / The Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, completed in 2018, is the seat of the Bishop of Knoxville.BEWILDERED
Stika has faced considerable criticism in recent years, some of it rising into the legal system. Stika has been accused in at least two ongoing lawsuits of mishandling investigations into claims of sexual misconduct.
In one suit, a Honduran asylum seeker who said a priest at her Catholic church in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, sexually assaulted her in 2020 said the diocese intentionally obstructed a law enforcement investigation. Another ongoing lawsuit accused a seminarian of raping a fellow diocesan employee in 2019 and accused Stika of intimidating the alleged victim and impeding an investigation.
The diocese has denied wrongdoing in court, but Stika’s handling of those and other matters has at times left priests and parishioners feeling bewildered at his judgment. Some have alleged he has a tendency to blame others and issues decrees without meaningfully consulting the people they affect.
“The past 12 years of service under Bishop Stika have been, on the whole, detrimental to priestly fraternity and even to our personal well-being,” wrote a group of diocese priests in a 2021 letter to Archbishop Christopher Pierre, the Vatican’s representative in the United States, a copy of which was obtained by the Times Free Press.
“How,” the priests wrote, “do we make recourse against the bishop when the bishop publicly and persistently reprimands his priests for exposing perceived wrongdoing that he appears to be obstinately against investigating?”
Priests’ concerns trickled into the laity. In late 2022 more than 100 Chattanooga Catholics sent a letter to Vatican leadership saying Stika had failed as a leader, leaving parishioners “bewildered in the dark with no shepherd.”
The letter said Stika had stifled dissent, mishandled and been secretive about sexual abuse allegations within the diocese, mishandled diocese finances and ignored calls for clarity on all fronts.
Stika and the diocese argued the detractors constituted a vocal minority of the diocese’s 70,000 Catholics and said they were being as transparent as they could given the ongoing litigation over the sexual misconduct claims.
Avuncular in disposition, Stika could be funny and irreverent — though some balked at what they described as his tendency to show up late for events and felt his attempts at levity could misfire. In the priest’s letter to Pierre, they recalled the bishop joking about a diocesan official’s COVID-19 mask, saying it reminded him of a woman’s brassiere and inquiring as to the “cup size.”
Reached by email Tuesday, Stika said he does have a sense of humor, but that he has no memory of making such a comment.
“If one person said that I said that, does that make it a fact?” he asked. “I don’t remember saying that.”
Some said Stika could be a bully. Early in 2021, several priests had filed formal complaints with the Vatican, after which outside bishops came to interview people within the diocese, multiple priests have told the Times Free Press. In one such complaint, reviewed by the newspaper, a priest recalled a meeting with the bishop and being pressured to reveal the names of the other priests with whom he had discussed the alleged misconduct of the seminarian who would later become a subject of one of the lawsuits.
Staff Photo by Matt Hamilton / Bishop Richard Stika speaks about the life of the Rev. Patrick Ryan in 2021, when a memorial mass was held for the Ryan, who died in 1878 of Yellow Fever.THANKING STIKA
In a letter to clergy Tuesday, Archbishop Fabre called for a meeting of diocese priests Wednesday afternoon in Knoxville and invited the public to a Mass at the Cathedral of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus on Wednesday evening. Fabre announced his intention to name a priest in the diocese to assist him in caring for it.
“I offer gratitude to Bishop Stika for his 14 years of episcopal ministry and extend to him my best wishes and prayers as he assumes his new role as bishop emeritus,” Fabre wrote. “Please join me in praying for him, as we ask for his continued prayers for us.”
Theresa Critchfield, who helped organize the Chattanooga letter to the diocese, said for some in the diocese it was a moment to celebrate. Although she is happy for priests who have felt bullied and hopes the resignation will be a moment to turn the page, she has mixed feelings for the diocese.
“I was grateful that the bishop had the presence of mind and the humility to resign, for whatever reason he’s resigning,” she said by phone Tuesday.
Others had sharper words.
“We hope that when the administrator for Knoxville is chosen, he will be a prelate who learns from Bishop Stika,” wrote Mike McDonnell, the communications manager for SNAP. “That is, we hope that this new bishop will do the opposite of his predecessor at every chance, will be truly transparent rather than secretive and will embrace the truth rather than try to stifle it. Knoxville parishioners deserve no less.”
The Vatican’s decision to appoint Archbishop Fabre to oversee the diocese as an administrator in between bishops is distinct from that of previous interim periods. In the past, a diocese council, as opposed to higher-up Catholic officials, twice selected Holy Spirit Catholic Church Pastor Al Humbrecht to serve as the top administrator.
Reached by phone Tuesday, Humbrecht said such in-between periods historically lasted about a year. He said the best advice he received came from his father, who told him to be good to the priests and to remember he was one of them.
He said priests are excited to move on and focus on the business of the church.
“There’s been so much distraction, between the lawsuits and the the priests who have been hurt,” he said.
THIRD BISHOP
Stika was born in St. Louis, where he was ordained a priest in 1985. He pastored several parishes and in the 1990s and into the early 2000s he served in several official positions, including vicar general of the archdiocese of St. Louis. He went on to chair the archdiocese’s review board and child safety committee.
In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI named Stika the third bishop of Knoxville, assigning him to care for the priests and parishes in the East Tennessee diocese formed in 1988. Around the time of his appointment, he told the Times Free Press he never aspired to be bishop but just to be a good parish priest.
“I once heard that if a person wanted to be a bishop, they probably should not be a bishop,” he told the paper at the time.
Stika and Cardinal Justin Rigali, who he worked under when the latter headed the St. Louis archdiocese, took up residence together in Knoxville.
In the following years, Stika partook in efforts to recognize the diocese’s past and secure its stature for the future. He came to Chattanooga in 2011 to announce Pope Benedict XVI had declared Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church a minor basilica and was involved with a campaign to get its former priest, Patrick Ryan, named as a saint. He presided over the construction of a new cathedral in Knoxville, constructed at a cost of roughly $35 million, a price tag which drew some criticism within the diocese.
“PRAY FOR ME”
Occasionally, Stika weighed in on and participated in matters of global Catholic concern. In 2020 he tweeted his confusion at how then-presidential candidate Joe Biden and then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, both Catholics, could support abortion rights.
Like many religious leaders during the pandemic, he suspended in-person worship in the diocese and adjusted Catholic rituals for public health reasons after in-person service resumed.
In his letter Tuesday to the diocese, Stika said he plans to remain in active ministry near St. Louis and continue to reside with Rigali. He thanked diocesan leaders for their work and said he loves East Tennessee and plans to return often to visit friends, celebrate Masses when asked and watch Vols games.
“I offer my genuine and heartfelt apology to anyone that I have disappointed over the years,” Stika wrote. “I have tremendous respect for everyone, even my detractors. I will continue to keep all of you, and this diocese, in my prayers. I ask that you pray for Archbishop Fabre as he oversees this diocese in the short term, and for your new bishop when he is selected. Finally, I humbly ask that you please pray for me.”
DIOCESE OF KNOXVILLE AT A GLANCE
— Founded in 1988
— Roughly 70,000 Catholics
— 51 parishes
— 71 priests
— 13 seminarians
— 10 schools
KNOXVILLE BISHOPS
— Anthony J. O’Connell, 1988-1998.
— Joseph E. Kurtz, 1999-2007.
— Richard F. Stika, 2009-2023.
Contact Andrew Schwartz at aschwartz@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6431.