... and it's Cleveland. (extended coverage added)

Update 3:

Rocco covers the news conference.

Complete audio of the news conference is available for download and listening here (18min, mp3 format).

Diocese of Cleveland website has more updates.

Update 2:

Cleveland gets a bishop and the dead sea scrolls today!

"The Diocese of Cleveland is the 15th largest in the country, and home to 802,767 Catholics, or 28 percent of the 8-county geographic area which comprises the diocese." [source]

Update:

Michael Paulson makes his report.

Michael Paulson previously has written an extensive biography of Lennon here (which also includes a large photo gallery, timeline, and links to other articles.)

Some quotes from that article:

"In Boston, he [Lennon] once hitched a ride on a plow so he could celebrate Mass for nuns snowbound in a hilltop cloister. In Scituate, he helped fight blazes when firefighters got injured, and he aided in the rescue of families trapped by coastal floodwaters during the Blizzard of '78.'"

...

"I was hopeful," he said, "but Vatican II was a very complex event in the life of the church and much of what was being written ... was very enthusiastic, but not really balanced in the sense of looking at the entirety of the teaching."

...

"He is notorious for his unmelodious singing voice, but enthusiastic about song; he started the children's choir in Scituate, and was such a reliable presence at recording sessions of the Daughters of St. Paul choir that they started referring to themselves as the Lennon Sisters."

...

"He delivers his homilies without notes -- he says he has never written one down -- in direct sentences with clear logical flow. At Matignon, his major extracurricular activity was the math club, and at Boston College, he planned to major in mathematics. But at the seminary, and ever since, his favorite subject was canon law -- a dusty abstraction to some, but a joy to him."

"Lennon, unlike most experts in the arcane rules that govern the church, did not train in Rome or at the Catholic University of America, but is a self-taught canonist, drawing on a personal library that now numbers 300 volumes on the subject."

...

"On a personal level, this [the abuse scandal] has made me more focused and committed to who I am and what I'm supposed to be," he said. "Things like this were not holy, and that's a real blemish on the church that Christ gave us. It's a terrible blemish, and the church has to be called back to holiness."

[read the rest.]

Richard Lennon was the Apostolic administrator for Boston prior to Archbishop O'Malley's election.

More info:

Rocco relates some nasty talk-radio reaction & Amy covers the story

Bishop-elect Lennon's Catholic Hierarchy stats page

Original report:

Following up on yesterday's report... Richard Lennon is Cleveland-bound:

Whispers in the Loggia: Lennon bound for Cleveland -- Boston free at last

Shouts in the Piazza: Cleveland Gets a Bostonian

... well, it looks like my diocese will just have to wait a little longer.

[photo source: AP Photo/Michael Dwyer]