The most telling thing about Michael George McGovern, Omaha’s new archbishop, did not come in response to my questions about his Jesuit education or a recent raid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on a meatpacking plant or the desires of young Catholics in the church today. It came unbidden from him as I was wrapping up my interview and preparing to leave his home.

“Can I ask you a question?” he said.

“Yes, sir,” I said. (“Sir!” I said. “Sir!”)

“What advice do you have for me?”

(Wait, what?)

“I’ve been a bishop for five years,” Archbishop McGovern went on, “the culture keeps changing, and just any advice about being a bishop here, especially being from Omaha yourself.”

Omaha, my hometown. I have not lived there for any substantial period of time since 1997. But I still like to keep an eye on what’s going on there. The diocese is located in northeast Nebraska and comprises not just the city of Omaha but 23 counties and includes 230,000 Catholics. It so happens Archbishop McGovern’s residence is about a four and a half minute drive from my childhood home, so I had set up an interview when I visited my family this summer.

Omaha is one of those cities that evokes for coastal Americans the lonesome, faraway and probably mildly depressed rail-and-river Midwest. Peoria. Topeka. Des Moines. Omaha. But the city today is continually being “upgraded” as it were, from that image. Sparkling new buildings, parks, homes. Suburban expansion. (And stubborn poverty in various sections of town.) Politically, Omaha prides itself on being outside the raging partisan world. A common sense, let’s just get things done kind of thing. Among other things, Omaha is known for a famous billionaire and some indie rock gods and a lot of youth soccer.

I really did not know what to do with the archbishop’s question asking me for advice about how to be a bishop in Omaha. It was a little intimidating. Advice for my childhood diocese, for my people? What if I led Archbishop McGovern astray? What if I blurted out that he should start an ecclesial campaign against corn-fed beef and quarterback-option football—and what if he did? His bishopric would be destroyed. So I started to say something about Nebraskans liking someone who was down to earth and non-ideological and just sort of “with the people.”

Then I realized I was basically advising McGovern to be the kind of bishop who, well, wasn’t afraid to ask someone for advice on how to be a bishop. How to show you’re “with the people”? Ask the people what they think. Archbishop McGovern didn’t need to listen to me about how to do his job. He just needed to keep listening to himself.

Jesuit Educated

Born in 1964 in Evergreen Park, Ill., the future Archbishop McGovern was ordained in 1994, served as pastor in two suburban Chicago parishes and then in 2020 became bishop of Belleville, a diocese in southern Illinois. He served there until 2025. On May 7, he was installed as the sixth bishop of Omaha.

Growing up in Chicago, he was also educated by the Jesuits and later even explored Jesuit life himself. I was intrigued to find out how life with Ignatian spirituality had formed him. When I showed up at Archbishop McGovern’s home, he had out on his coffee table his St. Ignatius College Prep yearbook and report card. Next to it was a maroon and gold scarf from Loyola University Chicago. Thoughtful nods to his Jesuit upbringing. Clearly the formation had stayed with him.

Archbishop McGovern said his vocation was seeded during his time at St. Ignatius, a co-ed high school that sits just west of downtown Chicago. The school back then was filled with Jesuits. “I had a good 10 classes with a Jesuit actually teaching,” he said. “And obviously the president and the principal were Jesuits at the time.”

“I started going to Mass every day,” said Archbishop McGovern, “and I really appreciated that Ignatius, at that point, they had Masses three times a day. “

Those experiences set a tone for the rest of his life. “I think that’s where, if you look at my life as a Catholic man, let alone as a Catholic priest, I think a lot of it was framed by those morning Masses at Ignatius.”

He joined prayer groups and did spiritual direction with Jesuits at the school. He began journaling and asking God for direction in life. When he was about to graduate, one of the priests, a former missionary in Peru named Bob Thul, S.J., told him to “keep the priesthood in mind. Keep the Society in mind.’”

This stuck with McGovern. “I always appreciated that,” he said. “Just, you know, that sense of, ‘I didn’t want you to leave without saying this directly.’ And I think that is something I very much appreciated.”

Another thing that he appreciated about the Jesuits at St. Ignatius was seeing the Jesuits at work together. “There is a Jesuit term, ‘ours,’” Archbishop McGovern said, indicating a unity of Jesuits. “So they had a sense of ‘ours.’ So even if you see, you know, this priest is in this room, this priest is in this room, this priest drives the school bus, this priest does this. This Jesuit scholastic is trying to work on a master’s degree part-time. I found there was something impressive about seeing the Society, you know, the members working together.”

This continued when he matriculated at Loyola University Chicago on the city’s north side. McGovern took classes with a number of Jesuit teachers and went to Mass celebrated by a rotating group of Jesuit priests. A key influence during his time at Loyola was Father Dave Hassel, an Augustine scholar.

“He did a lot of work on memory, the healing of memory,” the archbishop said. “I think he was ahead of his time.” Archbishop McGovern indicated there could be use for such teaching today: “Nowadays, especially, there’s a lot of talk about healing in society.”

Father Hassel’s approach, said McGovern, mimicked some techniques from Ignatian contemplation. “Let’s say you remember from childhood an argument between your parents was very difficult,” Archbishop McGovern related. “He said, kind of put yourself in the scene: the bacon’s frying, the toast is toasting, and you know, your parents raise their voices and they start this argument; and it’s just a very difficult memory from childhood. And we talk about how to bring Christ into the scene to say to the Lord: ‘Come with me, be with me in this.’”

McGovern graduated from Loyola Chicago in 1986, worked for four years and in 1989 began exploring more directly becoming a diocesan priest. He entered Chicago’s Mundelein Seminary in August 1990 and was ordained in 1994. His work in parishes also included work in the Chicago archdiocesan chancery. He served in that office part-time for three years while in parish life as an associate pastor, and then three more years full-time while a resident in a parish.

McGovern’s Jesuit upbringing clearly stayed with him. In 2002, with the permission of his bishop, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, he entered the Jesuit novitiate for a year. He ultimately discerned that Jesuit life was not his calling and returned to the Archdiocese of Chicago and a parish assignment.

Hispanic outreach

After several years as a parish priest, McGovern became bishop of Belleville. Among other things, he won praise in Belleville for making the attempt to connect with Hispanic Catholics by speaking Spanish. (He said he speaks what he calls “churchy Spanish” and is not necessarily fluent off the cuff, without a prepared text.) McGovern was told that his efforts at speaking Spanish earned him trust and appreciation in the Hispanic community in Belleville. He was then appointed to the see of Omaha.

Work with the Hispanic community will be all the more critical in Omaha, because around the time he was installed, Omaha experienced a major raid by ICE at a meatpacking plant.

On June 10, just a month after he was installed as bishop, ICE raided Glenn Valley Foods, a meat processing plant. Nearly 100 workers were detained. The story made national news with an article in The New York Times. It was the largest raid on a worksite in the history of Omaha.

In response to that event, said the archbishop, he tried to console Hispanic residents. “I did a three-minute video all in Spanish, assuring people that the church is with you, I am with you. We put that on the Facebook pages of the South Omaha parishes, and that little message got 18,000 views in just a couple days.”

Archbishop McGovern speculated about doing visits to detention centers to see how people held there are being treated. “I think that would help the government, and I think it would help the people,” he said. “If there was someone who had access that they could, I wouldn’t say audit, but have some exposure to what are the conditions, how people have been kept and to make sure that their rights and dignity are not stepped on.”

He also pointed to the need for immigration reform of the kind that politicians and activists have been calling for for years—namely, giving avenues for migrants who have been here for years to regularize their citizenship. “Let’s say they’ve been here 15 years. They’re working, there’s no issues, legal issues in terms of there’s no misconduct, to say, is there a way we could regularize their status?”

Plans for Omaha

In discussing what else he would like to focus on as bishop in Omaha, Archbishop McGovern mentioned a major problem in the city that is likely under the radar for many Omahans. The College World Series, a centerpiece of civic pride that Omaha has hosted every year since 1950, brings millions of dollars into the city and supports thousands of jobs. Yet it is also a hotspot for human trafficking. “We become ground zero for human trafficking in the United States while that tournament is going on,” the bishop said.

He said that the Omaha Catholic Charities has been visited by people during the games asking for help. “So I would like to really become much more organized about what is our response, and how do we try and address that issue? It’s sort of the shadow side of that tournament.”

I also asked the bishop about how he might engage with the segment of the young Catholic population who embrace traditional forms of worship—even the slender thread who are interested in attending celebrations of the old Latin Mass. (The celebration of the Tridentine Rite was restricted in 2021 in the document promulgated by Pope Francis, “Traditionis Custodes” as a way to preserve church unity around liturgical practice.)

The bishop likened the trend of young people interested in traditional forms of worship to the grandchildren of immigrants who want to know about the culture and rituals of their ancestors. “The immigrant came from Italy speaking and understanding Italian. Their children could understand it, but not speak it, and their children could neither speak nor understand it,” McGovern said. “But then there’s like this renewed interest of Who am I? Where am I from?”

“I think there’s something that’s going on with young people” in terms of their interest in historic traditions of the church.

He said a key to engaging young people is seeing what the church can offer them outside of the old rituals. “I would say I’d like to know more about what are people who are drawn to the traditional Latin Mass—What are they looking for?” he said. “And I think that is something where then to try and offer to people a good presentation of the Eucharist.”

I asked the archbishop in a follow-up email how Ignatian spirituality has helped him as a priest and bishop. He said that Ignatian “imaginative prayer,” placing oneself in the Gospel stories, has helped his prayer life. The nightly review of one’s day called the Examen has also helped him.

He also pointed to a prayer at the end of the First Week of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola. It begins in a classic baroque fashion native to Ignatius and prayers of the time: “Eternal Lord of all things, in the presence of Thy infinite goodness, and of Thy glorious mother, and of all Thy saints of Thy heavenly court, this is the offering of myself which I make with Thy favor and help.” The gist of the prayer that follows is to make oneself available for any of the hardships Christ took on, if it be for God’s service.

The bishop described it as “a go-to prayer in times of difficulty.”

The thread of Jesuit formation was also evident in his life when I asked him about his go-to books and films. The bishop said his favorite book was Evelyn Waugh’s Edmund Campion: Jesuit and Martyr. He said he has watched several videos about the book and the author and read the book itself at least 12 times.

As for other ways he spends his downtime, Archbishop McGovern said he likes visiting resale shops. “I could spend hours, you know, finding something from the ’70s, like a shirt or something.” He also said he was known for calling Bingo at parish halls in Belleville and could see himself doing the same in Omaha.

So Archbishop McGovern might be found in a south Omaha parish hall some swampy June night wearing a second-hand mustard yellow bowling shirt and calling Bingo. That alone may be enough for any Catholic in Omaha to embrace him as their new shepherd.

Correction, Jan. 25: The late Cardinal Francis George of Chicago was initially misidentified in this article as Cardinal Robert George.

Joe Hoover, S.J., is America’s poetry editor and producer of a new film, “The Allegory.”