Archbishop Timothy Dolan is new USCCB President; other new officers elected

The new president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan, the Archbishop of New York.

The office of president of the USCCB is a three year term of service.

The important point about the place of a conference of bishops in life of the Church is that they serve rather than replace the authority given to an individual bishop in exercising his office by teaching, serving (governing) and sanctifying the faithful of his diocese. But as Pope Benedict has said on any number of occasions, and which was also reiterated by Francis Cardinal George on Monday in his final presidential address, local churches are not national churches. Hence, priests are ordained bishops for the entire Church and not merely for thus-and-such diocese. Speaking to the Brazilian bishops on their recent ad limina visit (a visit to the Pope, various offices at the Holy See and for prayer at the tombs of Saints Peter and Paul) Benedict said: “… the counselors and structures of the episcopal conference exist to serve the bishops, not to replace them.” 

For a full theological treatment on bishops’ conferences you ought to read Pope John Paul II’s 1998 Apostolic Letter, Apostolos Suos: On the Theological and Juridical Nature of Episcopal Conferences.