Vatican City, Apr 8, 2025 /
10:10 am
The Vatican on Tuesday announced Pope Francis’ choice of Bishop Shawn McKnight of Jefferson City, Missouri, as the next archbishop of Kansas City in Kansas, following the resignation of Archbishop Joseph Naumann.
Naumann is retiring after turning 75 in June 2024 and after 20 years at the helm of the Archdiocese of Kansas City, Kansas, which has over 180,000 Catholics and a total population of nearly 1.4 million. Pope Francis accepted Naumann’s resignation on April 8 after the Kansas City archbishop submitted his letter last year as required by canon law.
Originally from St. Louis, Naumann was appointed coadjutor archbishop of Kansas City in January 2004 and assumed the role of archbishop one year later when his predecessor retired. Prior to that, he served for nearly seven years as an auxiliary bishop of St. Louis, the archdiocese in which he had been ordained a priest in 1975.
From 2018-2021, Naumann was chairman of the pro-life committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), for which he now serves as a consultant.
For the 56-year-old McKnight, the appointment marks a return to his home state — and a move just 150 miles to the west — after seven years in Missouri’s capital city.
The archbishop-designate, who will be installed in the Archdiocese of Kansas City, Kansas, on May 27, said in an April 8 statement that he was grateful for his seven years leading the Catholics of the Diocese of Jefferson City, his “first flock as a bishop.”
Kansas City, Kansas, on the border with the state of Missouri, is part of the greater metropolitan area of Kansas City, which also includes the separately incorporated city of Kansas City, Missouri (part of the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph).
Prior to his nomination as bishop of Jefferson City, McKnight, one of seven children, was a priest of the Diocese of Wichita, Kansas, where he was ordained in 1994.
The bishop has a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the University of Dallas and both a licentiate and a doctorate in sacred theology from the Pontifical Athenaeum of St. Anselm in Rome. His dissertation was on the permanent diaconate.
McKnight was an adjunct professor of theology and visiting scholar in the Bishop Gerber Institute of Catholic Studies at Newman University in Wichita from 2000-2001. He also served as a university chaplain.
From 2003-2008, McKnight taught liturgy and homiletics, and held several administrative roles, including dean of students at the Pontifical College Josephinum, a seminary in Columbus, Ohio.
He spent six years in Washington, D.C., serving as executive director of the Secretariat for Clergy, Consecrated Life, and Vocations of the USCCB before returning to serve in a parish in Wichita.
Pope Francis named him the fourth bishop of Jefferson City in early 2018.
Hannah Brockhaus is Catholic News Agency’s senior Vatican correspondent. After growing up in Omaha, Nebraska, she earned a degree in English from Truman State University in Missouri. In 2016, she moved to Rome, Italy, where in her spare time she enjoys reading and going on adventures with her husband and son.
