Mark O'Connell (bishop)

Mark O'Connell was born in Toronto, Ontario on June 25, 1964[1] to Thomas F. and Margaret M. (Delaney) O'Connell, both American citizens who were the children of Irish immigrants. His father Thomas was a librarian at York University and later at Boston College. The family returned to Massachusetts when Mark O'Connell was age 12. He graduated from Dover-Sherborn High School in Dover, Massachusetts, in 1982.[2]

O'Connell earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and philosophy at Boston College in 1986[3] and studied for the priesthood at Saint John's Seminary in Boston.

O'Connell was ordained into the priesthood by Cardinal Bernard Law for the Archdiocese of Boston on June 16, 1990.[1][2] After his ordination, O'Connell served in parishes in Woburn and Danvers and as a college chaplain at Salem State College, all in Massachusetts.

O'Connell undertook studies in canon law starting in 1997 at the Pontifical Athenaeum of the Holy Cross in Rome, completing his licentiate degree in 1999 and his doctorate in 2002.[2] O'Connell's dissertation was titled The Mobility of Secular Clerics and Incardination.[4] After returning to Boston, he joined the canonical affairs staff of the archdiocese in 2001[5] and was appointed judicial vicar in 2007.[6]

From 2009 to 2012, O'Connell served as a senior consultor to the Canon Law Society of America.[7] He has also served on the faculty of Saint John's Seminary and Pope St. John XXIII National Seminary.[2] From 2011 to 2014, O'Connell was a co-host on the daily radio program The Good Catholic Life, broadcast on radio station WQOM in Boston.[8]

On June 3, 2016, Pope Francis appointed O'Connell as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Boston and titular bishop of Gigthi in Tripolitana.[1][6] He was consecrated on August 24, 2016 at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston by Cardinal Seán O'Malley.[9] O'Connell also serves as pastor of St. Theresa's Parish in North Reading, Massachusetts.