BRAINTREE -- On Oct. 31, 60-year-old Richard Garth Henning will be installed as the 10th bishop and sixth archbishop of the Archdiocese of Boston.

To hear Dona Isabel tell it, it was all thanks to her.

Dona Isabel, originally from Mexico City, was one of many friends that Henning made when he was a priest in the Diocese of Rockville Centre. Archbishop Henning speaks fluent Spanish and was active in the Hispanic communities of the parishes he served, including St. Patrick Parish in Bay Shore, where he met Isabel. In 2018, Isabel went on a pilgrimage to Rome and met Pope Francis. The pope noticed Isabel in the crowd, greeted her, and spoke to her.

When she returned to Bay Shore, Isabel told Archbishop Henning: "I told the Holy Father that he had to make you a bishop. I told him your name. He should make you a bishop."

Three months later, Archbishop Henning was named an auxiliary bishop of Rockville Centre, and Isabel was convinced that it was because of her conversation with Pope Francis. After his ordination, she proudly presented Archbishop Henning to the assembly at St. Patrick's. He was her pride and joy.

In his time ministering to Hispanic communities, Archbishop Henning has found that abuelitas (grandmothers) like Isabel are "like the priests of the home."

"They're the transmitters of the faith, and very important to holding the family together," he told The Pilot in a Sept. 20 interview at the Archdiocese of Boston Pastoral Center in Braintree. "So this woman was just always so encouraging to the whole community, but certainly me as well."

On Aug. 5, it was announced that Pope Francis had chosen Archbishop Henning, then Bishop of Providence, to succeed Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley as the shepherd of Boston's 1.8 million Catholics. Whether it could all be traced back to Isabel's influence or not, Archbishop Henning responded to the call with some trepidation.

"This is a very large, complex archdiocese, and the cardinal is a remarkable man," he said. "I mean, he's a giant. I'm not going to even pretend that I can replace him. I can follow him and do my best."

His love of priestly ministry has assuaged his fears, along with his trust in Pope Francis's choice. At first, he was uncertain about moving from Providence to Boston after only 18 months in Rhode Island. Over time, however, his anxiety has slowly given way to excitement.

"I'll do here what I did there, which is, I will give myself over to it as fully as I can," he said. "Love the people in front of me to do the job in front of me."

On Sept. 18, he attended the 16th annual Celebration of the Priesthood, which he called his "first real experience of the people of God in Boston."

"To see their joy and their love for their priests was deeply moving to me," he said. "So I'm feeling a lot better."

So far, he said, he does not have any goals for his time as archbishop. His current priorities are to listen and learn as much as he can to understand the archdiocese and his responsibilities to it.

"Obviously, the Holy Father has confidence in me to do this," he said. "But I think, nonetheless, he would be the first to tell me that we're to be a listening church. I have to go out. I have to go out to the parishes and schools and meet people in their own world."

He said that one of the biggest challenges of the church in New England is that so many Catholics no longer attend Mass or find meaning from the faith.

"I consider that tragic," he said. "I love them. I want them to know the grace of Jesus Christ, to receive the same gifts that I have received from him."

Along with evangelization, he feels a "call to compassion" for those who are suffering. He believes that the Catholic Church can alleviate such suffering.

"I know the culture we're living in also has kind of lost its way and lost its hope," he said. "There's a quiet desperation. People are losing themselves in addiction, substances, even addictive behaviors that don't bring them a sense of meaning, purpose, or joy."

Where others would see a challenge, Archbishop Henning sees a gift. Boston's burgeoning immigrant population has contributed significantly to the church, but it is a heavy responsibility to provide ministry to so many different cultures. Archbishop Henning has been learning Portuguese to communicate with the Lusophone community, which, after the Hispanic community, is the largest non-English-language demographic in the archdiocese. However, he said, he cannot hope to learn every language.

"I have to hope that we have a shared language of faith," he said.

He said that while secular culture divides people by identity, "the Catholic instinct is for us to live in communion with one another, to learn from each other, to engage with one another."

He compared it to the miracle of Pentecost, when the Apostles gained the ability to preach the Gospel and have it be heard in every language.

"In other words, they don't have to become the same to be united," he said. "They can be united in faith, even if they remain unique and distinct and have that rich diversity that's found throughout creation. So, I think this is a richly diverse place that's a great gift, a blessing, and part of the challenge of God to us is to find bridges across those linguistic and cultural divides."

Diversity has been a mainstay in Archbishop Henning's life, from his diverse hobbies (from sailing, kayaking and paddleboarding to listening to sci-fi audiobooks) to his academic credentials (a master's degree in history from St. John's University in 1988, a Licentiate of Sacred Theology from the Catholic University of America in 2000, a 2007 Doctorate of Theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome). His nephews didn't understand why he was still in school at age 30, so he would joke to them that he was "in the 27th grade."

He studied narrative theology, which he described as "looking for what was in the mind of the sacred author."

"What is he trying to teach?" he continued. "What is he trying to proclaim? So as a priest, it really began to enrich my prayer life and my capacity to preach."

Archbishop Henning said that closely studying Scripture improved his homilies and enhanced his understanding of moral theology.

"It addresses it by showing us a picture of God and a picture of what it means to be human," he said, "sometimes the not-so-happy parts of what it means to be human, but certainly also the person of Jesus in the Gospels."

He said that you don't need a doctorate to practice moral theology -- "you need a heart, and you need to trust in God and seek his grace and his mercy."

Looking back on his life, the archbishop said that there have been many times that he had to learn to trust God and embrace the fact that there are some things out of his control.

"I have to keep coming back to that truth, that God never promises us that it will be easy," he said. "Instead, he says, 'Take up your cross and follow me.' But he walks with us on that journey, and when we trust him, and we entrust that sense of loss and fear or even our sins to him, then we're going to find the strength and the grace."

Richard Garth Henning was born on Oct. 17, 1964, at Mercy Hospital in Rockville Centre, New York. He was the oldest of five children -- three sisters and a brother. He grew up on Long Island, in the village of Valley Stream (the term "village" may be misleading because the community was home to over 40,000 people when Archbishop Henning was a boy). Valley Stream was right on the border of New York City and had an urban feel.

"There were just so many kids in the neighborhood, so many moms in the houses, that kind of the whole neighborhood watched you," Archbishop Henning recalled. "It was a good place for kids to grow up."

The Hennings were a close family who lived in a Catholic neighborhood, three blocks away from Holy Name of Mary Parish. Archbishop Henning's father, a New York City firefighter also named Richard, grew up in that parish. There were many days that Archbishop Henning wasn't sure whether his father would come home.

"Even before 9/11, it was still one of the most dangerous jobs in the world," he said.

Archbishop Henning vividly remembers he and his family gathered around the TV, watching live news footage of a fire that his father had been called to. They saw the roof of the building collapse.

"Several firefighters were lost or injured, and we didn't know whether he was among them," he said. "This was before cell phones, so it was hours before we knew that he was safe. That was not a happy feeling."

The young archbishop attended Holy Name Grammar School.

"My parents made the sacrifice of sending us to Catholic schools, so I had a happy childhood," he said.

When he was a fifth grader at Holy Name, a Vincentian priest visited the class to talk about vocations. He showed the students a film strip about the priesthood. At recess that day, Archbishop Henning and his friends talked about the film. The boys said they were thinking about being priests.

"I did, too," Archbishop Henning said. "It's just the others moved on, and I didn't."

The priesthood was in the back of his mind throughout his childhood. Priests were a constant presence in his life and frequent guests at the Henning family dinner table. When Archbishop Henning was in eighth grade, he got a job working in the Holy Name rectory.

"I got to know the priests at that time," he said. "So priests were just an important part of our lives. I was in Catholic school, and I just felt drawn."

When he entered Chaminade, a Marianist boys high school on Long Island, he told one of the priests that he was thinking about a vocation.

"Get through high school," the priest told him, "and we'll see what happens in college."

At Chaminade, Archbishop Henning was active in the History Club and the Catholic League. When he wasn't working in the rectory, he was hanging out with friends, playing the trumpet ("I can't claim I was any good, though," he said) and playing games in the street -- kick the can, soccer, stickball, touch football, wiffle ball. In the summers, he would go sailing, kayaking, clamming, fishing, and crabbing.

"Water is my happy place," he said.

He and his family would vacation together in the Great South Bay.

"That was always a place of close family relationships, good friendships, and just a lot of beauty to be out there in the marshes, in the bay, or at the beach." he said.

That was partly why he chose "Put out into the deep" as his episcopal motto. Along with being the words of Jesus to Peter in the Gospel of Luke, it was a common saying of Pope St. John Paul II, who became pope when Archbishop Henning was in eighth grade.

"That was one of the things he used to tell us, to 'put out into the deep,' in that very unique voice of his," he said. "So that kind of rang in my head when I had the call from the nuncio and knew I was to be a bishop, and I had to think about a motto. That one just kept coming to me."

Archbishop Henning graduated from Chaminade in 1982 and went on to attend St. John's University in Queens. He earned his bachelor's degree in history in 1986 but couldn't escape the feeling that God was calling him to the priesthood. In 1987, when he was still completing his final year of studies for his master's degree, he entered the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception in Huntington.

"It wasn't a very good balance," he said, "but I'm a pretty good student, so I managed the courses pretty well."

He called the seminary "a place to begin my understanding and practice of the spiritual life." It was also a place where he made lifelong friendships.

"Certainly, theologically, it was a formative experience for me," he said. "I was raised in a Catholic family, but still, that whole world of a priest's life was still sort of somewhat new to me."

He was ordained to the priesthood in 1992. His first pastoral assignment was at St. Peter of Alcantara Parish in Port Washington. Less than a year after he became pastor there, one of the eighth graders in the parish school got a hold of an unlocked gun and accidentally shot himself in front of his friend. The boy died instantly.

"It was one of those moments where the theory went out the window, and the reality of what it means to be a man of faith kind of came to the fore," he said.

He knew the deceased boy and his mother well.

"I walked with her and the community through that experience, which went on for a very long time, really," he said. "And I learned so much from them. And one of the things I learned was that I was the priest, I was supposed to be the expert in theology, the Scriptures, God. But it was actually this woman, his mother, who taught me more about what it means to trust God in what are really just impossible circumstances."

Archbishop Henning served in St. Peter's for five years. There was a large Hispanic community there, but he knew very little Spanish.

"It was kind of humiliating, actually," he recalled. "I felt like a kindergartener. I could hardly say more than 'Hello, how are you?'"

Four women, who worked as housekeepers in the homes of wealthy families, gave him Spanish lessons over the course of a year. He then went to Costa Rica to study for six weeks.

Working with the Hispanic community taught Archbishop Henning not just the Spanish language, but the universality of the church. Many of his parishioners were refugees from Central America fleeing "terrible situations," but they were also "people of profound compassion and faith, of commitment to family and community."

"There was also a joy and generosity of spirit there," he said, "even though many were struggling with trauma and with poverty. I just found so much happiness being around them and among them. I learned so much from them about what it means to live as a disciple of Jesus."

No matter where he went, he made sure to be near a Hispanic community.

Archbishop Henning taught Scripture at the Seminary of the Immaculate Conception from 2002 to 2012, when he became its rector and oversaw its transformation into a retreat center. During the transformation, he continued to teach Rockville Centre's seminarians, who were now at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers.

"It felt pretty challenging," he said. "Now I look back and think, 'Wow, that was a lot easier than this.' But yeah, it was a lot. This is part of the reality of the lives of priests, though, in this day and age. Most of us have more than one job at a given time."

At the time, the Bishop of Rockville Centre was Bishop William Murphy, a Boston priest who was an auxiliary bishop of Boston from 1995 to 2001. While the seminary was becoming a retreat center, Bishop Murphy and Archbishop Henning met monthly.

"That was a really wonderful experience in my life," Archbishop Henning said. "Over several years, just being around him. He's a very, very intelligent, gifted man of the church who has a rich experience of the universal church, having worked in Rome, having been involved very greatly in diplomacy and missions around the world. So, I learned a great deal from him."

It was lonely in the seminary at the time, and Archbishop Henning needed a companion. A childhood friend of his who works as a veterinarian in Maine found a Labrador retriever puppy on a farm. Archbishop Henning took her in and named her Agnes, after the patron saint of the Diocese of Rockville Centre. He got the dog without telling Bishop Murphy, so a colleague suggested naming her Agnes. That way, Bishop Murphy could never get rid of her.

"He welcomed her with open arms," Archbishop Henning said.

Agnes is Archbishop Henning's pet to this day.

"She's a very low-key, pretty sweet Labrador retriever," he said. "She's very excitable around a Frisbee on a beach, but otherwise pretty placid."

Agnes loves the water as much as her owner does and has helped him with the stress of his work.

"Dogs can read us," he said. "And so, there's kind of a feedback loop. You can't be anxious around a dog, or you'll make the dog anxious. So, one of the things that helps me is that being around a dog forces me not to get too lost in the worries, like you have to remind yourself to stop fretting and calm down."

Archbishop Henning was in his car when he received the call from the papal nuncio, telling him that he had been named auxiliary bishop of Rockville Centre.

"It's a bit of a blur," he said. "And I'm not quite sure what I was feeling, other than surprise and not quite knowing what to say."

He said yes, because in his mind, that was the only way to answer a call from the pope. He had no time to discern that call, like he did with the priesthood.

"When you're made a bishop, it just comes out of the blue, and it's not something you're looking to do," he said. "In that regard, it's a very different kind of vocation, and one that can be challenging, but also has a grace of its own, because you're being called to just kind of trust God and abandon yourself."

His job as an auxiliary bishop was to carry out the vision of the diocesan bishop, Bishop John Barres.

"I think I really helped him in his work as bishop, and I think he would say that, too," Archbishop Henning said. "He certainly has said it enough to me."

Archbishop Henning became coadjutor bishop of the Diocese of Providence in January 2023 and became its ordinary in May of that year.

As bishop, he "put a lot of miles in the car," visiting every parish and almost every Catholic school in Rhode Island.

"I tried to really just listen to people, understand them," he said. "I spent a lot of my energy getting to know the priests, because I'm convinced that the church's life lives in the parish, and the priests are the most critical partners to a bishop in terms of the life of the church."

He was the first Spanish-speaking bishop in Providence history.

"The Hispanic community was particularly welcoming to me and particularly joyful," he said.

He enjoyed Rhode Island's hospitality (he couldn't believe some of the spreads parishes put out to welcome him) and "human scale."

"It's a relatively small place, which makes it a really meaningful place, because you get to know people in a great way," he said.

Upon hearing that he was to become Archbishop of Boston, his first feeling was sadness that he had to leave Rhode Island and the people he loved.

"I believe in the notion that a bishop is kind of married to his diocese, and I did everything in my power over those 18 months to give myself over to the people of Providence," he said.

Archbishop Henning said that it would take several hours to list all of the lessons he has learned during his priesthood. The biggest mistake, he said, has been not trusting God's judgment, either through prayer, Scripture, or listening to other people.

"I hope that I'm a disciple of the Lord, but I'm a sinner," he said. "I can be selfish and sinful. I still need to go to confession like everybody else and have that humility to acknowledge the need for God's grace."

He said that trust is the most important lesson he has learned as a priest. He described original sin as a failure of trust, and man putting his own will over God.

"If there's one thing that's the most important thing for the life of a disciple," he said, "and in a lot of ways the most difficult thing, it's that ability to surrender to God, to entrust yourself to God, and to live in accordance with God's will for you even when you might really want something else."