When Bishop Robert P. Boxie III was ordained as an auxiliary bishop of Washington on July 7, 2026 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, he was once again in church with his family.
Those attending the ordination included his parents Robert Boxie Jr. and Roxanne Boxie, his sister Robyn Boxie, numerous cousins, and his extended family from his home parish, Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
In an interview before his ordination, Bishop Boxie said the roots of his faith, especially his parents’ example, laid the foundation for his call to priesthood and to him eventually becoming a bishop.
“This encapsulates the faith that they passed on to me and my sister… Faith and church and the parish and prayer and community service were a given and standards in our house,” said Bishop Boxie, who is 45 and is now the nation’s youngest Catholic bishop and the Church’s newest African American bishop.
He noted that his family faithfully attended Mass together every Sunday while he was growing up, and when they went on vacations, “the first thing my mom would do after we’d go to a hotel and check in, mom would ask, ‘Where is the nearest church?’”
His father worked as an operator at a local refinery and his mother worked in the accounting department for a chemical plant. Robert Boxie Jr. volunteered as the bingo chairperson for Sacred Heart of Jesus Parish, and every Wednesday night, he and Roxanne Boxie and their son and daughter would be helping out at the fundraiser.
“The church was an extension of our home,” Bishop Boxie said, noting they had several neighbors who were also parishioners.
The bishop pointed out that his parents also volunteered at the church’s fairs and bazaars. “Dad fried turkey legs, and mom did the face painting… She was a lector as well.” The future bishop and his sister attended Sacred Heart of Jesus School, and the family was also very involved there, too.
Their home parish “was more than a church,” he said. “It was a center for the African American community in southwest Louisiana. The school at Sacred Heart was extremely important… Black folks value education, and Sacred Heart was giving a top-notch education for African Americans.”
The Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament and the Holy Ghost Fathers established a legacy at Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church, Bishop Boxie said, noting that St. Katharine Drexel, the foundress of the Blessed Sacrament Sisters, sometimes visited the parish.
“They were very much invested in the community… and they wanted to give the students and families the absolute best,” he said. In its heyday, the school taught kindergarten through the 12th grade and had an extension program with Xavier University in New Orleans.
In 1970, Sacred Heart’s high school merged with two other area Catholic schools to form St. Louis Catholic High School in Lake Charles, which the future bishop attended.
Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic Church has the distinction of being the home parish of three Catholic bishops – Bishop Boxie; Bishop Harold R. Perry, a New Orleans auxiliary bishop and a member of the Society of the Divine Word who died in 1991; and Bishop Leonard J. Olivier, a Washington auxiliary bishop and a member of the Society of the Divine Word who died in 2014.
“I knew Bishop Olivier very well. I served with him a number of times,” said Bishop Boxie of his predecessor as a Washington auxiliary bishop, who served in that role from 1988 to 2003. “I went to him for spiritual direction a couple of years when I got here to Washington.”
Bishop Olivier, he said, “was a man of faith, a very humble man. He had an inner strength… He was who he was, a man of integrity, a man of real virtue and a friend to all.”
Bishop Boxie also knew Bishop Olivier’s family in Lake Charles, and he went to school with several of that bishop’s grandnieces and nephews.
Praising the legacy of those two earlier bishops from Lake Charles, Bishop Boxie said, “I’m blessed to be standing on their shoulders. This is a legacy that I’m stepping into, that formed these men to be leaders in the Church. Now that has been given to me.”
Having three bishops from Sacred Heart of Jesus Church “is a testament to the faith of those priests and religious that formed the community to be what it is today,” he said.
Bishop Boxie had varied experiences before entering the seminary. After graduating from Vanderbilt University in Nashville with a degree in chemical engineering and a second major in music, he worked in France for a year teaching English at a high school there. Returning to the United States, he graduated from Harvard Law School and worked as an attorney in the Washington area, first as a law clerk at a federal court in Greenbelt, Maryland, and later as an associate at a D.C. law firm.
He had earlier thought about the priesthood, and after having those experiences, “that call was still there. It gave me the freedom to say ‘yes,’” he said.
Explaining how his life pivoted toward the priesthood, Bishop Boxie said, “It ultimately boils down to a pursuit of truth for me. I thought that truth could be pursued in law and policy… I realized that was not the case (for me). I was searching for something more, something deeper. It brought me back to my faith, and it brought me back to God.” All along, he said, God “was leading me toward Him.”
As a seminarian, he studied at Theological College in Washington and at the Pontifical North American College and Gregorian University in Rome, and he was ordained as a priest of the Archdiocese of Washington in 2016.
Bishop Boxie hopes that his varied interests and life experiences will help him “connect as a bishop now to the people I will minister to and serve in this archdiocese.”
In his early years as a priest, then-Father Boxie served as a parochial vicar at St. Joseph Parish in Largo, Maryland, from 2017-20, where he worked with Bishop Roy Campbell Jr., the longtime pastor there who continues in that role following his recent retirement as an auxiliary bishop of Washington.
Reflecting on Bishop Campbell, his mentor and friend, Bishop Boxie said, “He’s at heart a pastor… I really learned from him to be a faithful son of the Church, to be hard-working and to know that you can give more than you think you can give. Ultimately, you do your best, and the Lord will take care of the rest.”
As Bishop Campbell fulfilled his duties as an auxiliary bishop, then-Father Boxie had the opportunity to take care of many parish responsibilities there, including presiding at First Holy Communions and Funeral Masses.
The new bishop said his pastoral experiences taught him that “when you love them (your parishioners) and are present to them and care for them, then they will embrace you, and it allows all of us to share life together, to accompany one another on this faith journey.” That makes the priesthood enjoyable and fulfilling, he said.
From 2020 until becoming an auxiliary bishop in 2026, then-Father Boxie served as the Catholic chaplain at the Sister Thea Bowman Catholic Student Center at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
“I’ve been saying that I had the best job as a priest in the Archdiocese of Washington, hands-down… Just being on a college campus, being at Howard, this is a unique community, an historic one, an important one,” Bishop Boxie said.
Praising the students at Howard University, he said, “They’ve really given me the ability to be more of myself, because these students come as they are, and being able to meet them where they are and share my experiences, I feel to a certain extent like a father to them, being able to walk with them at a very critical time in their own lives. It’s enabled me to grow in my own fatherly heart.”
In that fatherly role as a university chaplain, he wrote recommendation letters for students, gave them advice, and let them know they could call him whenever they were facing a difficult situation.
Bishop Boxie also invited Howard University students to attend archdiocesan events with him, like Black Catholic History Month Masses, and helping to clean up a hillside at Sacred Heart Parish in Bowie, Maryland where archaeologists have uncovered what are believed to be the unmarked graves of hundreds of people who were enslaved by the Jesuits before Emancipation at the religious order’s White Marsh plantation in that area.
This past spring, he accompanied Howard students on a Black Catholic and civil rights history pilgrimage to Atlanta, New Orleans and Montgomery, Alabama.
He said that as the chaplain there, he wanted to help students be secure in their identity as Black young people and as Catholics.
As an auxiliary bishop, one of his responsibilities will be to serve as the vicar for the archdiocese’s different cultural communities, and also to help the archdiocese address the pastoral goals that Cardinal McElroy announced after extensive consultations with lay leaders and input from local priests, including stemming the exodus of young people leaving the Church.
A key challenge that today’s young people face, Bishop Boxie said, is they “don’t know that they are loved by God,” and as a result, they might seek meaning in life and make decisions that are harmful to them.
To counter that, the bishop emphasizes the message that young people “have a Father in heaven who loves them, cares for them, who desires their happiness, and who has a specific plan for each of them to thrive and to flourish.”
For his episcopal motto, Bishop-elect Boxie chose “Domine, da mihi sapientiam,” which is Latin for “O Lord, give me wisdom,” and is based on Wisdom 9 and 1 Kings 3.
“It’s a prayer,” he said, explaining the biblical roots of that passage, how Solomon was asking God for the gift of wisdom to govern and lead his people, when he felt that he was too young and needed help to do what God was calling him to do.
“I’m asking the Lord for some help, to give me wisdom, to give me an understanding heart, in order to step into this role to serve and minister well to the people he has entrusted to my care,” Bishop Boxie said.
The new bishop’s outside interests include running, playing tennis, working out, going to museums, hanging out with priest friends, reading and traveling.
Reflecting on his new life as an auxiliary bishop, he said, “I’m really looking forward to getting to know more of this archdiocese, visiting parishes, meeting folks, hearing their stories, seeing what makes them come alive, what they’re passionate about, learning from them, listening to them. I’m really looking forward to experiencing more of the Archdiocese of Washington.”
His own faith journey, Bishop Boxie said, reflects God’s love for him, and “the wonderful solid foundation my parents and family gave to me, to put God first always in your life, to rely upon His help, to trust in His grace, and to take advantage of whatever opportunity that the Lord presents before me.”
Washington’s new auxiliary bishop smiled and added, “And I am still along for the ride on this adventure, on this truly privileged adventure.”
