The Cathedral of the Holy Cross will be the setting for the episcopal ordination. The tentative date is the Cathedral's feast day, a solemnity in the cathedral, the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, Sept. 14. The date has some historical relationships to previous episcopal ordinations.
The first double episcopal ordination of two priests of the same diocese assigned as auxiliaries to the same diocese in the United States was in Holy Cross Cathedral on Sept. 14, 1950 -- 60 years ago. Archbishop Cushing ordained Bishops Erik MacKenzie and Thomas Markham in that ceremony; Humberto Cardinal Medeiros ordained New Orleans' now retired Archbishop Alfred C. Hughes on that date in 1981; and Bernard Cardinal Law ordained Bishops Walter Edyvean (presently West Regional Bishop) and Richard Lennon (Bishop of Cleveland) in 2001. This will be the eighth double episcopal ordination of Boston auxiliaries at Holy Cross Cathedral: 1950 -- Markham and MacKenzie; 1972 -- Riley and Maguire; 1992 -- McNamara and Boles; 1995 -- McCormack and Murphy; 1996 -- Irwin and Allue; 2001 -- Edyvean and Lennon; 2006, Dooher and Hennessey.