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November 28, 2001
Cheyenne bishop president of Rural Life board
Bishop David Ricken assumes post to national conference
The Most Rev. Bishop David Ricken assumes the position of president of the National Catholic Rural Life Conference Board of Directors. Bishop Ricken replaced The Most Rev. Bishop Raymond Burke of LaCrosse, Wis., who served two terms from 1996-2001.
The conference serves the mission of the Church by communicating a Catholic perspective and urging public action on rural life and environmental issues.
Bishop Ricken was born in 1952 to George William Ricken and Bertha Ricken in Dodge City, Kan. He began his collegiate studies at the Pontifical College Josephinum in Worthington, Ohio, and graduated from Conception Seminary College in Conception, Mo., in 1974. His theological studies for the Diocese of Pueblo were taken at St. Meinrad School for Theology, Meinrad, Ind., and the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, where he received his STM/MA in 1980 and where he attended the American College of Seminary Formation.
He was ordained to the priesthood by the Pueblo Bishop Arthur Tafoya in 1980 and after serving as pastor and administrator, rose to the level of vice-chancellor of the diocese, where he served from 1985-1987.
In 1987, he was assigned to graduate studies at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, where he received his licentiate degree in canon law in 1989. Following his studies, he returned to the Diocese of Pueblo as vocation director and vicar for ministry formation. He was named chancellor in 1992. He also served on the Diocesan Tribunal until 1996.
He was then sent to Rome where he worked on the Vatican's Congregation of Clergy until being called as coadjutor bishop of the Diocese of Cheyenne in January 2000. He was ordained in Rome by the pope in January of 2000 and became the ordinary of the Diocese of Cheyenne upon Bishop Joseph Hart's retirement last September.
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