POLITICS: Archbishop Hicks’ challenge includes embracing a new, younger Catholic faithful

Timothy Cardinal Dolan, a tireless advocate of religious liberty, Catholic education, the unborn and the poor, has become the steady and strong yet ever-beaming face of the American church — despite some very tumultuous times.

He fearlessly speaks the truth in an appealing way, often punctuated with a guffaw; if you’ve ever met him, you never forget it.

He will remember your name in a crowd of thousands and pull you in close to talk, oblivious as the crowd waiting to speak to him swells.

Take it from someone who knows.

His successor, Bishop Ronald Hicks, inherits not just a massive and extraordinarily diverse diocese in every sense of the word, but the legacy of the man who has been running it.

Perhaps the new archbishop’s first challenge will be how to honor the beloved Dolan’s larger-than-life legacy, while establishing his own voice in one of the most prominent and demanding roles in American Catholic life.

He will certainly face administrative challenges, most acutely the still ongoing, several-hundred-million-dollar settlement with sexual abuse victims.

The archdiocese recently announced this would entail the sale of an iconic half-billion-dollar Manhattan property.

It’s painful, but the sale presents Hicks an opportunity to demonstrate careful management and transparency — and a chance to bring financial stability, liberating resources for evangelization, education and service to the poor.

Beyond administrative burdens, Hicks inherits a diocese that is known as a cultural bellwether, and he is walking right into the latest storm: physician-assisted suicide.

Dolan’s retirement comes on the heels of news that Gov. Kathy Hochul intends to sign a bill making New York the latest state to legalize it.

This doesn’t just jeopardize the many vulnerable elderly and disabled New Yorkers who will be under Bishop Hicks’ care; it accelerates a national debate that will thrust him immediately into the media spotlight.

The matter of immigration also looms large. Hicks takes the helm of a diocese that’s home to one of the largest immigrant populations in the country.

He will have to balance the abruptly changing course of national immigration enforcement with the Church’s emphasis on care and concern for immigrants’ human dignity — while grappling with the reality that many regular mass-goers don’t necessarily align with the United States Conference on Catholic Bishops’ recent positioning on the matter.

And then there is the Catholic revival afoot, especially among young people.

As The Post has reported, parishes from Greenwich Village to the Upper East Side are reporting doubling and even tripling in numbers of those enrolling in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, the church’s course for would-be converts — especially among young people seeking truth in a world that increasingly devalues it.

Even the seat of the diocese boasts a robust young adult presence, prompting Dolan himself to remark, “Walking through St. Patrick’s Cathedral, I am always impressed by the number of young people there.”

Hicks cannot escape the need to foster genuine unity among his flock without flattening legitimate differences that stalks even the Holy Father.

Hicks faces the challenge of channeling a newfound zeal for faith away from destructive online forces that disfigure church teachings, and toward a newfound orthodoxy rooted in truth, dignity, peace and unity.

If anything, this is the paramount challenge facing every prelate today, as Pope Leo made clear from his very first words on the loggia.

Bishop Hicks’ task is not to reinvent New York Catholicism, but to steward it faithfully — building on what he has received, deepening unity, and guiding one of the church’s most important dioceses.

Cardinal Dolan has given him a great head start.

Ashley McGuire is a senior fellow with The Catholic Association and co-host of the nationally syndicated radio show “Conversations with Consequences.”