METUCHEN, NJ — Pope Leo XIV has appointed Bishop Michael A. Saporito, currently an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Newark, as the new Bishop of the Diocese of Metuchen, the diocese announced Tuesday.
The Diocese of Metuchen has been without a permanent bishop since November 2025, when then-Bishop James F. Checchio was installed as Coadjutor Archbishop of New Orleans.
"I am deeply grateful and humbled that Pope Leo XIV has called me to serve as the Bishop of Metuchen," Saporito said in a statement. "While it is not easy to leave the people and places that have formed and sustained me, I welcome this new mission with trust in the Holy Spirit. I look forward to meeting the priests, deacons, religious and lay faithful of the Diocese, walking with them as we seek to follow Jesus Christ and bear witness to the hope of the Gospel."
Saporito, 64, was born May 3, 1962, in Newark. He grew up in Bloomfield and attended St. Thomas the Apostle Elementary School and Paul VI Regional High School in Clifton. He graduated from Rutgers University-Newark in 1984 with a bachelor's degree in accounting and worked in public accounting for three years before entering Immaculate Conception Seminary at Seton Hall University in September 1987. He was ordained a priest on May 30, 1992.
He went on to serve in parishes across the Archdiocese of Newark, including as parochial vicar at churches in West Orange, River Edge, Paramus and Wyckoff. He was pastor of St. Joseph Parish in Maplewood from 2004 to 2011 and pastor of St. Helen Parish in Westfield from 2011 to 2020.
Pope Francis named Saporito an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Newark on Feb. 27, 2020. He was ordained to the episcopacy June 30, 2020, at the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark and has served as regional bishop of Bergen County for the past six years.
The Diocese of Metuchen, founded in 1981, covers Hunterdon, Middlesex, Somerset and Warren counties and serves a Catholic population of more than 670,000 across 90 parishes. Saporito will be the sixth bishop in the diocese's history.
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