{"id":280149,"date":"2026-05-22T00:13:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T00:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/280149\/"},"modified":"2026-05-22T00:13:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T00:13:07","slug":"diocese-of-pensacola-tallahassee-announces-death-of-bishop-john-h-ricard-at-age-86","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/280149\/","title":{"rendered":"Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee announces death of Bishop John H. Ricard at age 86"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>PENSACOLA, Fla. &#8212; The Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee announced the passing of Bishop John H. Ricard.<\/p>\n<p>Bishop Ricard died at the age of 86 in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday. He was the fourth bishop of Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee.<\/p>\n<p>Bishop William A. Wack shared the following statement: <\/p>\n<p>As the longest tenured bishop for our diocese and my predecessor I looked to him as a mentor and brother who was always available to give me advice and support. I am deeply grateful for his leadership and vision which has set us on a firm foundation as a local church.<\/p>\n<p>Pope St. John Paul II named Ricard as bishop of the Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee in January 1997.  He was installed on March 13, 1997 at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart. <\/p>\n<p>Bishop Ricard was also instrumental in relaunching the National Black Catholic Congress in 1987. He served as its president until 2019. He was a consultant to the USCCB Ad-Hoc Committee Against Racism (2019-2025).<\/p>\n<p>Comment with Bubbles<\/p>\n<p>BE THE FIRST TO COMMENT<\/p>\n<p>Funeral arrangements are not set in stone for Bishop Ricard as of yet. But he&#8217;ll be laid to rest at St. Michael\u2019s Cemetery in Pensacola.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PENSACOLA, Fla. &#8212; The Diocese of Pensacola-Tallahassee announced the passing of Bishop John H. Ricard. Bishop Ricard died&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-280149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280149","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}