Bishop
Wenski Biography
Motto:
All Things to All Men (I
Corinthians 9:22)
Bishop Wenski, born in West Palm Beach
on October 18, 1950 grew up in Lake Worth,
Florida where he attended Catholic school
at his home parish, Sacred Heart. He studied
at St. John Vianney Minor Seminary in
Miami and later at St. Vincent de Paul
Major Seminary in Boynton Beach and was
ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of
Miami on May 15, 1976. He earned a B.A.
Degree in Philosophy (1972), and Masters
of Divinity (1975), from the Boynton Beach
Seminary and in 1993 a MA from the School
of Sociology of Fordham University in
New York. He has also taken summer courses
at the Catholic University of Lublin (Poland).
He served three years
as associate pastor of Corpus Christi
Church, a mainly Hispanic
parish in Miami. In 1979, after briefly
ministering in Haiti, he was assigned
to the newly established Haitian Apostolate
of the Archdiocese. He was associate director
and then director of the Pierre Toussaint
Haitian Catholic Center in Miami from
that time to his appointment as a Bishop
in 1997. The Pierre Toussaint Haitian
Catholic Center in addition to providing
for the pastoral and spiritual needs of
the Haitian communities of South Florida
also provided numerous social, educational
and legal services to newly arrived Haitian
immigrants. He also served concurrently
as pastor of three Haitian mission parishes
in the Archdiocese—Notre-Dame d’Haiti
in Miami, Divine Mercy in Fort Lauderdale,
and St. Josephin Pompano Beach.
Through
the 1980’s he also conducted a circuit-riding
ministry that led him to help establish
Haitian Catholic communities from Homestead
in the south to Fort Pierce to the north,
Immokalee to the West and Fort Lauderdale
to the east. In the early 1980’s
his outreach to Haitians led him to preach
in migrant camps near Lake Wales and Winter
Haven.
He celebrated the weekly Mass in English for shut-ins at the local ABC affiliate
from 1992-1997. He directed the Archdiocese of Miami Ministry to Non-Hispanic
Ethnic Groups.
In January 1996, the then Father Wenski was appointed the Archdiocese Director
of Catholic Charities, one of the largest Catholic social service agencies
in the United States. In this capacity he helped forge a collaborative relationship
with Caritas Cuba, the social service arm of the Catholic Church in Cuba. Since
early 1996 he has traveled to Cuba on many occasions on behalf of the Church.
In late 1996, he spearheaded a relief operation that delivered over 150,000
pounds of food to Caritas Cuba for distribution to people left homeless by
hurricane Lily. This was the first time that Cubans in Miami participated in
a humanitarian relief effort directed to Cuba. In subsequent years, similar
relief efforts were also directed to Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and the
countries of Central America and Colombia.
Appointed auxiliary Bishop of Miami on June 24, 1997, he was ordained to the
episcopacy on September 3, 1997 along with Bishop Gilberto Fernandez in the
Miami Arena. Besides his duties in the Archdiocese of Miami, where he served
on numerous boards including Catholic Hospice, Catholic Charities, Catholic
Charities Legal Services, and St. Thomas University, he also served as chair
of the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops Committee on Migration
and was a member of the Conference’s Secretariat for the Church in Latin America
and CLINIC (Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc.). On behalf of his work
on these committees, he has traveled to the Congo and the Great Lakes region
of Africa, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. He also served on a
number of community and civic organizations, including Miami-Dade County’s
Homeless Trust, the Coordinating Council of Broward and in 2001, Governor Bush
appointed him to the Florida Council on Homelessness. He is currently the Episcopal
Moderator for Catholic Health Services for the Florida Catholic Conference.
Bishop Wenski speaks
Haitian, Creole and Spanish fluently
and preaches and
celebrates Mass regularly in both languages.
He learned Spanish while still a seminarian
and worked with various Spanish speaking
groups including Cubans, Puerto Ricans
and Mexicans during his seminary training.
He also has a limited knowledge of Polish,
the language of his immigrant father and
Polish American mother. His parents moved
to Florida from Detroit, Michigan shortly
after their wedding in 1947. They are
both deceased. His sister and niece live
in Lake Worth. He is the only Florida
native serving as a bishop in the state.
Pope John Paul II appointed Bishop Wenski as coadjutor bishop of the Diocese
of Orlando on July 1, 2003.
In August 2004, U.S. Attorney Paul I. Perez appointed Bishop Wenski to the Human Trafficking Working Group.
In September 2004, Governor Jeb Bush appointed Bishop Wenski to the Governor’s Task Force on Haiti.
Bishop Wenski assumed the role of the fourth bishop of the Diocese of Orlando on November 13, 2004.
Bishop Wenski was elected chairman of the USCCB International Policy Committee on November 16, 2004.
In October 2007, Bishop Wenski was selected to serve on the Board of Directors of The Florida Specialty Crop Foundation, a non-profit public charity that responds to challenges that confront specialty crop producers and their stakeholders.
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