WASHINGTON — Pope John Paul II has accepted the resignation of Bishop James C. Timlin of Scranton, Pa., and named Auxiliary Bishop Joseph F. Martino of Philadelphia to succeed him.

Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, papal nuncio to the United States, announced the resignation and appointment July 25 in Washington.

Bishop Timlin, 75, had been head of the diocese since 1984. Born Aug. 5, 1927, in Scranton, he was ordained to the priesthood in 1951. After 25 years as a priest of the diocese, he was appointed an auxiliary bishop of Scranton in 1976 and was named to head the diocese eight years later.

A licensed pilot, Bishop Timlin has served as the U.S. bishops' episcopal liaison to airport chaplains. He has long been active in dialogue with the Polish National Catholic Church, which has its headquarters in Scranton, and is the dialogue's Roman Catholic co-chair.

In 1992, Bishop Timlin officiated at a priestly ordination in a Latin-language ceremony that used the pre-Vatican II Tridentine rite. It was believed to be first such official use of that rite in 30 years. In 1998, he celebrated the first Mass in the Tridentine rite in 30 years at the North American College in Rome. In 1999, he received the first Domus Dei award from the Latin Liturgy Association.

Bishop Timlin, a frequent participant at the annual March of Life each January in Washington, has defended the sanctity of life at all stages. At a 1999 death penalty rally in Scranton, he said, "My prayer is that all of our legislators and elected officials will be inspired by rallies like this and do away with the death penalty in our state and in our nation."

He opted out of attending this year's graduation ceremony at the University of Scranton, a Jesuit-run university in Scranton, because of the scheduled commencement address of broadcaster Chris Matthews, whom some alumni criticized for espousing views that support laws favoring abortion.

During the 1990s, Bishop Timlin was president of the Institute on Religious Life. He was a participant in the 1994 world Synod of Bishops on religious and consecrated life.

Ten years ago, he authorized the purchase of advertising time on the popular cable music channels MTV and VH1 to run vocations ads. "The Holy Father told us to get out on the streets; MTV may not be safe, but it's where we're called," he said.

In a 1990 interview with Catholic News Service he said the Renew process was "a high-water mark as far as I'm concerned" in his diocese. Evangelization, which he said could be seen as an extension of Renew, is a challenge in terms of "conversion and reaching out to the unchurched."

At the time of his retirement, Bishop Timlin was a consultant on the U.S. bishops' Committee on Migration and the bishops' Committee on Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs.

Joseph F. Martino was born in Philadelphia May 1, 1946.

After studies at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary in Overbrook, Pa., and at the North American College in Rome, where he earned a licentiate in theology from the Gregorian University, he was ordained a priest Dec. 18, 1970.

He was parochial vicar of Epiphany Parish in Philadelphia from 1971 to 1977, when he began graduate studies, earning a doctorate in church history from the Gregorian University in Rome.

From 1982 to 1986 he was on the faculty of Bishop Shanahan High School in Chester, Pa. He was professor of church history and dean of theology at St. Charles Borromeo from 1986 to 1990 and archdiocesan director of ecumenical and interreligious affairs from 1990 until 1992, when he became director of renewal of pastoral life.

At the time of his episcopal ordination in 1996, Bishop Martino was director of the archdiocesan Office for Renewal of Pastoral Life. Bishop Martino was also the author of the official church document pleading the sainthood cause of St. Katharine Drexel, founder of the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament. She was beatified in 1988 and was canonized in 2000.

At an ecumenical prayer service Dec. 31, 1999, at Philadelphia's Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul, Bishop Martino, the archdiocese's top ecumenical and interfaith officer, led Pope John Paul II's prayer for the millennium.

During a 1998 conference in Denver on reconciliation, Bishop Martino, then a member of the U.S. bishops' Committee on Evangelization, said: "We need to affirm our belief in Jesus Christ by using his name more often. ... While we are helping others, we must be seeking to restore a right relationship with Jesus Christ."

Since 2000, Bishop Martino has been a member of a U.S. bishops' Subcommittee on Interreligious Dialogue.

At the bishops' fall general meeting in 2000, during discussion on a statement, "Sudan's Cry for Peace," Bishop Martino said Jews he knows are "somewhat scandalized" that the Catholic Church has not aided the Sudanese "like we did with (captive Jews in) the Soviet Union 25 years ago."

He urged the bishops to put the Sudan issue "into the sunlight. That sunlight is searing." The statement was ultimately approved on a voice vote.

In 2000, he was one of 10 bishops assembled by the Cardinal Newman Society as an ecclesiastical advisory committee to assist the group in its efforts to renew Catholic identity in Catholic higher education by implementing "Ex Corde Ecclesiae," the pope's 1990 apostolic constitution on Catholic universities.

At a 2001 ecumenical forum in Harrisburg, Pa., that he helped organize, Bishop Martino noted that all Christians, through their belief in the Lord, share a tradition. Thus, he said, Catholics have a duty to at least pray for Christian unity.

"So certainly our Holy Father has called us to ecumenism as a part of evangelization," Bishop Martino said. "If we cannot unify the body of Christ to bring the face of Christ to the world undivided, then we're going to fail in our evangelization efforts and the world will be the poorer for that."