Bishop Blair at St Joseph Parish in February 2009

Bishop Leonard Blair of Toledo has named the priest responsible for promoting vocations in his diocese to also be pastor of a church famous for celebrating the Tridentine Mass that was normative before before the Second Vatican Council.

Among new personnel changes announced last Saturday for the northwestern Ohio diocese, the bishop said Fr Adam Hertzfeld, 34, would become pastor of Saint Joseph Parish in addition to his duties as diocesan vocation director.  The Rome-trained priest has been vocations director the past two years.  He will begin his additional assignment on July 1st.

Fr Hetzfeld was ordained in 2002 after earning an undergraduate degree at the Franciscan University of Steubenville and completing theological studies at the Gregorian University in Rome.  He completed a doctorate in moral theology at the Alphonsianum Academy in Rome in 2008 with a thesis on the writings of Dietrich von Hildebrand and the role “affectivity” plays in religious conversion. 

Bishop Blair, a Detroit native and former secretary to Cardinal Edmund Szoka, has been head of the diocese since 2003.  He is a member of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ committee on doctrine and last year was appointed by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to conduct a doctrinal investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), an organization that represents about 95% of the 59.000 religious sisters in the United States.