VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI named a married former Episcopal bishop Sunday to head the first U.S. organizational structure for disaffected Anglicans and Episcopalians who want to join the Roman Catholic Church.

Under the pope's plan, Anglicans who become Catholic will be allowed to keep some of their heritage in liturgy and other areas.

Married Anglican priests who convert can stay married and be ordained in the Catholic Church, an exception to the Vatican's celibacy rule. Married Anglican bishops, however, cannot retain that position, and will serve the Catholic Church as priests.

The Episcopal Church is the U.S. Anglican body in the United States.

More than 100 Anglican clergy have applied to become Catholic priests in the U.S. ordinariate. Church officials said more than 1,400 individuals are seeking to join.

The U.S. Episcopal Church has just under 2 million members. Many Anglo-Catholics in the United States had never been part of the Episcopal Church.

The Rev. Jeffrey Neil Steenson, a Catholic convert, will lead the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, the equivalent of a diocese, that will be based in Houston, Texas, but will operate nationally.

Steenson, 59, who has a doctorate from the University of Oxford, has been married since 1974 and has three adult children. His wife also converted to Catholicism. He was ordained as a Catholic priest in 2009 in the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, N.M., and helped create the education and training program for Anglican priests seeking to join the Catholic Church.

Steenson stepped down in 2007 as the Episcopal bishop of Rio Grande, in Albuquerque, after the Episcopal Church elected the first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

Steenson had said he was "deeply troubled" about the direction of the U.S. denomination and he described the Catholic Church as the "true home of Anglicanism."

Benedict in 2009 issued an unprecedented invitation for Anglicans to become Catholic in groups or as parishes, at a time when traditional Anglicans in several countries were increasingly upset by the ordination of women and gay bishops. Formerly, Anglican converts to Catholicism were accepted on a case-by-case basis.

The pope's decision created tensions with Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the spiritual leader of the world Anglican Communion, who like his predecessors had been in talks with Vatican officials to bring Anglicans and Catholics closer.