Special to The Hays Daily News

SALINA -- Pope Benedict XVI today named Msgr. Edward J. Weisenburger, a former Hays resident, the new bishop of the Diocese of Salina.  

The announcement was made official at 5 a.m. Central time, which is noon in Rome.

Weisenburger, 51, presently is the vicar general of the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the rector of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Cathedral in Oklahoma City.

He succeeds Bishop Paul Coakley, who was named archbishop of Oklahoma City on Dec. 16, 2010.

In the absence of a bishop, the main administrator for the Salina diocese has been Father Barry Brinkman.

Weisenburger is a native of Illinois who lived in Hays a few years during his childhood. However, he grew up primarily in Lawton, Okla., where he graduated from high school in 1979.

His mother, the late Asella Walters Weisenburger, was born and raised in Hays. His father, Edward Weisenburger, a retired military officer, still survives and lives in Oklahoma City.

Weisenburger graduated with honors both from Conception Seminary College in Conception, Mo., in 1983 and from the American College Seminary at the Catholic University of Louvain in Leuven, Belgium, with degrees in 1986 and '87.

Weisenburger arrived Sunday in Salina and officiated the 8 a.m. Mass at the Sacred Heart Cathedral. After a day of meeting staff and a press conference in Salina, Weisenburger will return to Oklahoma City until his ordination and installation, for which the dates will be announced in the near future.