Pope Leo XIV on Thursday appointed Bishop Michael Pham as bishop of the Diocese of San Diego. He will rise from the position of auxiliary bishop there and succeed Cardinal Robert McElroy as head of the diocese.

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Having received his episcopal consecration in September 2023, the 58-year-old Vietnam-born bishop has also served as titular bishop of Cercina. He was appointed the San Diego Diocese’s temporary administrator after McElroy was installed as bishop of Washington in March.

Since his ordination to the priesthood in 1999, Pham has ministered to Catholic faithful in parishes throughout the San Diego Diocese.

From 1991 to 2001, he served as assistant priest for St. Mary, Star of the Sea, in Oceanside. Between 2004 and 2023 he was appointed parish priest for the San Diego parishes of Holy Family and St. Therese.

Other offices the new bishop-elect has held in the San Diego Diocese include vocations director from 2001 to 2004, vicar for ethnic and intercultural communities since 2017, and vicar general of San Diego. 

He has also been a member of the diocese’s executive board, presbyteral council, finance council, college of consultors, and boards for priests and seminarians. 

Pham began his seminary studies in the 1990s at St. Francis Seminary at the University of San Diego and completed his training at St. Patrick’s Seminary in Menlo Park, where he was awarded a bachelor’s degree in systematic theology and a master’s degree in divinity.

In 2020, he completed a licentiate degree in sacred theology at the University of St. Thomas Aquinas (Angelicum) in Rome.

The bishop-elect also obtained a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering from San Diego State University and completed a master’s degree in psychology at the University of Phoenix in 2009.

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