Miami archbishop joins hundreds of motorcyclists for annual fundraising ride

CNA Staff, Jan 27, 2025 / 17:05 pm

The Archdiocese of Miami on Sunday hosted its 13th annual “Archbishop’s Motorcycle Ride,” a fundraising event with Archbishop Thomas Wenski leading a parade of bikers at the helm of a Harley motorbike. 

The yearly event benefits St. Luke’s Center, an outreach program of Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Miami. The center offers both residential and outpatient rehab services as well as relapse prevention therapy and other programs for those struggling with addiction. 

Wenski told CNA on Monday that he had been participating in charity rides even before assuming the archbishopric in 2010.

“When I was bishop of Orlando I did a few there too,” he said with a laugh.

“We do the ride every year, usually on the last Sunday of January,” the prelate said. “It’s been growing every year. This year we had 250-300 motorcycles.”

The event kicked off with Mass at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Doral, Florida. Afterward, bikers rode to St. Justin Martyr Church in Key Largo, a distance of about 50 miles. 

The archbishop noted that the fundraiser’s $25 entry fee doesn’t raise a huge sum of money. But, he said, the rehabilitation program is “an important work for Catholic Charities,” and having it widely reported “gives St. Luke’s some good PR.”

The prelate said he received his motorcycle endorsement, or motorcycle license, about 25 years ago, “right around my 50th birthday.” He had been a bishop for about three years by that point, he said. 

The bishop said he also learned how to fly a Cessna 172, a small single-engine airplane, when he was a young priest in the 1980s — though when asked, he said there weren’t any charity flights in the works.

So what does the archbishop ride? “I have a Harley-Davidson Street Glide,” he told CNA. 

The Miami Herald, meanwhile, reported on Sunday that the archbishop joked that President Donald Trump had thrown a bit of a wrench into the ride this year.

“We don’t have as many [police officers] as we’ve had in past years,” Wenski said on Sunday, “because the president arrived last night in Doral. I think he came to do some golfing or something.”