Iowa to Bronx to Utah

The Holy See last week gave to the Roman Catholic diocese of Salt Lake, Utah a new bishop, Rev. James E. Kearney, 48, pastor-organizer in 1928 of the Church of St. Francis Xavier in The Bronx. Iowa-born, Bishop-elect Kearney studied at Teachers College in Manhattan and Catholic University in Washington. He is diocesan superintendent of Bronx schools, lecturer at Good Counsel College in White Plains. In Utah he will succeed another onetime Bronx pastor, Most Rev. John Joseph Mitty, 48, who was appointed last February to be Coadjutor Archbishop of San Francisco (TIME, Feb. 15).

This latest westward shift caused little surprise among U. S. Catholics. Though Western Catholic strength is not to be compared numerically with that of the East, its enrolled communicants are more numerous (save in Mormon Utah and Idaho) than those of any other sect. Once the Western Catholics were scattered pioneers. During the last decade the U. S. hierarchy has worked mightily in the West to build up schools, colleges, churches, hospitals. No State is now without a diocese of its own (last to get one was Nevada last year -- TIME, Aug. 3).

The West awaits one thing more -- a red hat. For two years there have been ru mors of a consistory at which His Holiness Pope Pius XI would add to the College of Cardinals, depleted now from 70 to 54.-- Almost certain to be nominated are two North American prelates, Quebec's Arch bishop Jean Marie Rodrigue Villeneuve. successor to the late Felix Raymond Marie Cardinal Rouleau; and busy 71-year-old Archbishop Edward Joseph Hanna of San Francisco, who got for his coadjutor Salt Lake's Mitty, now replaced by The Bronx's Kearney.

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