Coadjutor bishop and bishop of Sioux City On August 19, 1997, DiNardo was appointed
coadjutor bishop of Sioux City by
Pope John Paul II to assist Bishop
Lawrence Soens. He received his
episcopal consecration on October 7, 1997, from Soens with Bishops
Donald Wuerl and
Raymond Burke serving as
co-consecrators, in the Church of the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ. DiNardo succeeded Soens as the sixth bishop of Sioux City upon the latter's resignation on November 28, 1998.
Coadjutor archbishop and archbishop of Galveston-Houston DiNardo was later named coadjutor bishop of Galveston-Houston by John Paul II on January 16, 2004. The
diocese was elevated to the rank of a
metropolitan archdiocese by John Paul II on December 29, 2004, and he thus became
coadjutor archbishop. On February 28, 2006,
Pope Benedict XVI accepted the retirement of Archbishop
Joseph Fiorenza, and DiNardo succeeded him as the second archbishop of Galveston-Houston. He received the
pallium, a vestment worn by
metropolitan bishops, from Benedict XVI on June 29 of that year. In an interview after the announcement that he would be made the first Cardinal in Texas, DiNardo commented that "There is a certain sense of the church in Texas... It is more laid-back, informal, which I think is good." In January 2009, DiNardo was named to the
Pontifical Council for Culture. DiNardo is a board member of the National Catholic Partnership for Persons with Disabilities. He is also a board member of
Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., an advisor to the National Association of Pastoral Musicians, a member of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, and a member of the Ad Hoc Committee to Oversee the Use of the Catechism for the USCCB. DiNardo is the Grand Prior of the USA Southwestern Lieutenancy of the
Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem, in which he holds the rank of
knight grand cross. DiNardo was a
cardinal elector who participated in the
2013 papal conclave that selected
Pope Francis and in the
2025 papal conclave that elected
Pope Leo XIV. In November 2014, at the USCCB fall meeting, DiNardo was elected as a delegate to the 2015 Synod of Bishops on the Family, pending Vatican approval. DiNardo promised to release a list of archdiocesan priests with credible accusations of sexual abuse of minors in January 2019. In November,
CBS News spoke to 20 people who claim to have knowledge of incidents of misconduct, and none of them had been contacted. On January 30, 2019, DiNardo released a list of names of 40 priests from the archdiocese with credible allegations of sexual misconduct over the previous 70 years. One name on the list was John Keller. DiNardo was criticized for allowing Keller to offer Mass publicly at his parish the morning after the list was released. After accepting his retirement on January 20, 2025 as the Archbishop of Galveston-Houston, Pope Leo named DiNardo as
apostolic administrator of the
Diocese of Amarillo on February 13, 2026 while awaiting a successor for the retired Bishop
Patrick Zurek. ==Personal==