U.S. Bishops to Travel to Rome for Ad Limina Visits With Pope Leo XIV in 2027
The U.S. bishops' conference has received the schedule for the visits, which will run from March to September 2027 and will be the first the American bishops make to Pope Leo XIV.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has received the calendar for its ad limina visits in 2027, when the American bishops will travel to Rome to meet with Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope. Msgr. Kevin Fuller, general secretary of the conference, announced the schedule in a May 19 letter, giving the bishops of the country's 196 dioceses as much time as possible to plan their participation.
The visits take place every five years under canon law and are an obligation for bishops: they travel to Rome to venerate the tombs of the apostles Peter and Paul and to present the pope with a detailed report on the state of their dioceses. The accompanying documents often run to several hundred pages and cover the main areas of diocesan life. Along with the spiritual component, the visits allow bishops to meet with the heads of the dicasteries of the Roman Curia, the Vatican's central administrative offices.
The schedule opens in the first week of March 2027 with Region I, which takes in the dioceses of New England, and continues with Region II, New York, at the end of that month. The cycle runs to late September, when Region XV, the Eastern Catholic eparchies of the United States, makes its visit. The previous round of ad limina visits by the American bishops took place between the winter of 2019 and 2020.
Coordinating the visits requires matching the calendars of hundreds of bishops from around the world with the commitments of the pope and Vatican officials. The American bishops were due to make their visit the previous year, but the death of Pope Francis and the conclave that followed changed the planned schedule.
Diocesan chancery staff in the United States will have less than a year to prepare detailed analyses of multiple aspects of diocesan life, including demographic data, finances, evangelization efforts and other indicators. It will be the first time American dioceses present Pope Leo XIV with the results of the global synodal process that began under Francis.
The visits will take place after the U.S. midterm elections and amid disagreements between the Holy See and the White House over foreign and immigration policy. Points of friction include military interventions in Venezuela and Iran and the Trump administration's policy of detaining and deporting immigrants in the country illegally.
