Good News From the Diocese of Lincoln NE, Interview With Bishop Conley

The Catholic World Report, Jim Graves: Bishop James Conley is the ninth bishop of the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska. The Midwestern diocese is home to 96,000 Catholics who attend 134 parishes and missions.

The bishop grew up in Overland Park, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City. His father was a building-materials salesman and his mother a housewife; he has one adopted sister. The family was nominally Presbyterian and attended church occasionally.

While attending the Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas, Conley studied the “Great Books”—favorites included the Confessions of St. Augustine and the writings of Blessed John Henry Newman—and converted to Catholicism at age 20. He said his father was “not too happy” about his conversion—he told him he’d given up the freedom of thinking for himself. Interview is here.