The following citation was read and presented during the conferring of an honorary doctorate to The Most Rev. Sean W. Rowe at the Commencement Exercises for the Class of 2026 on May 20, 2026.
Pastor. Bishop. Servant leader. Steward of change. Yours is a ministry shaped by deep love for the Church and a steady confidence that, in every season of uncertainty, God is calling the people of Jesus Christ more fully into courage, humility, and common life.
Rooted in western Pennsylvania, formed by the faithful witness of local congregations, and educated at Grove City College and Virginia Theological Seminary, you discerned a call to ordained ministry at an unusually young age. From the beginning, your vocation has been marked by clarity, maturity, and a willingness to serve where the Church鈥檚 needs are most urgent. You later earned a doctorate in organizational learning and leadership from Gannon University, bringing to your ministry not only pastoral conviction, but a disciplined understanding of institutions, change, and faithful adaptation.
Ordained to the priesthood in 2000, you served as rector of St. John鈥檚 Episcopal Church in Franklin, Pennsylvania, where you learned the daily and holy work of parish ministry. There, among a congregation and community facing their own challenges, you practiced the ministry of presence, listening, truth-telling, and reconciliation. You served not only within the walls of the Church, but in the civic life of the community, embodying a priesthood attentive to the whole life of God鈥檚 people.
In 2007, at the age of thirty-two, you were elected and consecrated Bishop of Northwestern Pennsylvania, becoming the youngest member of the House of Bishops. In that ministry, you helped a small diocese face complex realities with honesty, imagination, and hope. You led through moments that required courage and transparency, and you called the Church to trust that truth, repentance, and resilience are essential to faithful Christian witness.
Your episcopal ministry expanded as you served as Bishop Provisional of Bethlehem from 2014 to 2018 and, beginning in 2019, as Bishop Provisional of Western New York while continuing your leadership in Northwestern Pennsylvania. Through these shared episcopal partnerships, you helped model new forms of diocesan collaboration, privileging Gospel impact over institutional habit and inviting the Church to imagine structures that serve mission rather than preserve anxiety. In a time when the wider Church has been compelled to ask hard questions about sustainability, vitality, and purpose, your ministry has offered a practical and hopeful witness to adaptive leadership.
In June 2024, the House of Bishops elected you on the first ballot as the Twenty-Eighth Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church, and the House of Deputies confirmed that election at the 81st General Convention. On November 1, 2024, you began your nine-year term as Presiding Bishop and Primate, succeeding the Most Rev. Michael B. Curry and taking up the ministry of chief pastor, chair of Executive Council, and public voice of this Church.
At your investiture, you called Episcopalians to become 鈥渙ne church in Jesus Christ,鈥� grounded not in nostalgia or institutional self-preservation, but in shared ministry, mutual interdependence, and the proclamation of resurrection life.
Those who know your ministry recognize in you a rare combination of pastoral warmth, administrative wisdom, theological seriousness, and evangelical hope. You are a preacher and pastor, a bishop and strategist, a truth-teller and bridge-builder.
The Rt. Rev. Michael Curry, your predecessor as Presiding Bishop says of you, 鈥淭here are times when the right person is summoned by the Spirit, working through ordinary human agents, to serve in what proves to be just the right moment. That was the case when in the biblical story old Mordecai challenged a young Queen Esther with the words, 鈥榃ho knows? Perhaps you have been called to the Royal dignity for such a time as this.鈥� That was the case for the bishops who elected Bishop Rowe to be the Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church.鈥�
Bishop Curry continues, 鈥淟ike Mordecai we sensed and trusted that the Spirit was leading us to Bishop Rowe as is the right person to lead with us into the providential possibilities ofthis moment in our life as a church committed to living and bearing witness to the way of Jesus Christ for 鈥榮uch a time as this.鈥�
His seasoned commitment to Jesus Christ, his depth of spirituality, his experience in and knowledge of the organizational and managerial sciences, his genuine humility, remarkable wisdom and subtle wit, all came together to suggest that he was someone who could provide the kind of faithful and effective leadership needed to serve God鈥檚 way of love and life through us as a church in 鈥榮uch a time as this.鈥欌��
In gratitude for your faithful priesthood and episcopate, your courageous and adaptive leadership, your commitment to local ministry and churchwide renewal, and your witness to the unity of the Body of Christ in a changing world, the Board of Trustees of the Episcopal Theological 51视频 is honored to confer upon you the degree of Doctor of Divinity, honoris causa.