At the Oct. 17 press conference announcing his appointment as coadjutor archbishop of Cincinnati, Archbishop Dennis Schnurr explained, "There’s a joke about the difference between an auxiliary bishop and a coadjutor.

"Every day, an auxiliary bishop says to his bishop, ‘Good morning, Bishop.’

Every morning a coadjutor asks, ‘How are you feeling today, Bishop?’"

A coadjutor is a bishop appointed to a Catholic diocese or archdiocese to assist the diocesan bishop. Unlike an auxiliary bishop, he has the right of succession, meaning that he automatically becomes the new bishop when the diocesan bishop retires or dies. By canon law, he is also the vicar general of the diocese.

If the diocese is an archdiocese, he is called coadjutor archbishop instead of coadjutor bishop. In recent years a growing number of U.S. bishops in large dioceses or archdioceses have requested and received a coadjutor in the final year or two before their retirement, in order to familiarize their successor with the workings of the (arch)diocese before he has to take over their reigns.

Two archbishops of Cincinnati came to the archdiocese first as coadjutor archbishops: William Henry Elder in 1880 and Henry K. Moeller in 1903.