(LifeSiteNews) — Mayor Zohran Mamdani became the first New York City mayor in at least 86 years to skip the local archbishop’s installation ceremony in what has been denounced as a slight to Catholics.
Ronald Hicks replaced Cardinal Timothy Dolan as the archbishop of New York on Friday in a ceremony that has been attended by New York mayors since at least 1939.
Mamdani, a Muslim and self-described “democratic socialist,” opted to congratulate Archbishop Hicks on social media instead of attending his installation.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani skipped the installation ceremony of Ronald Hicks as the new Catholic Archbishop of New York, an event that civic leaders in major cities typically attend as a sign of respect for the local Catholic community, which makes up roughly one-third of the… pic.twitter.com/IHMIRwyu17
— Sachin Jose (@Sachinettiyil) February 9, 2026
“Congratulations to Archbishop Ronald Hicks on today’s installment and welcome to New York City,” Mamdani wrote Friday on X. “I know that Archbishop Hicks and I share a deep and abiding commitment to the dignity of every human being and look forward to working together to create a more just and compassionate city where every New Yorker can thrive.”
A City Hall spokesperson told the New York Post that Mamdani had a scheduling conflict and sent one of his deputy mayors, a Catholic, in his stead. The spokesperson added that the two would be speaking on Tuesday.
Mamdani’s public schedule for that day only indicated he would attend an interfaith prayer breakfast at 10 a.m. and a winter weather press conference at 4 p.m.
New York’s Catholic League slammed the mayor’s no-show at the installation as an insult to Catholics, especially considering the ceremony was close to Mamdani’s interfaith breakfast.
“Mamdani has been in office for just over a month, and already he is signaling to Catholics that they are not welcome,” the Catholic League remarked in a statement.
“The installation began a few hours after the Interfaith Breakfast at the New York Public Library; it is a short walk up Fifth Avenue to St. Patrick’s Cathedral,” the league noted. “He could easily have been there. Instead, he attended to business as usual.”
Mamdani’s disregard for a symbolically important event for Catholics in NYC is consistent with his radically anti-Catholic positions, including his vehement support for abortion, gender “reassignment” procedures, and homosexual “marriage.”
The mayor favors effectively unlimited abortion-on-demand and, per Planned Parenthood, “doubling funding for both New York City’s Abortion Access Hub and the New York Abortion Access Fund (NYAAF),” and has also threatened to put crisis pregnancy centers out of business, as previously covered by LifeSiteNews.
He has committed, according to Planned Parenthood’s statement endorsing him, to “confronting private health care institutions that have refused to provide” so-called “gender transition” procedures.
Observers have pointed out that Catholics make up about one-third of New York City’s population, making Mamdani’s decision to skip Archbishop Hicks’ installation potentially consequential for his base of support.
Christopher Hale, a Democratic National Convention delegate and author of the Letters from Leo blog, decried Mamdani’s decision on X, writing, “Catholics in New York deserve to know that their mayor has their back,” as he criticized ICE deportations in the city.