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Twenty-Sixth Sunday of the Year
30 September 2007
Dear Friends in Christ,
On Tuesday of this week, the Most Reverend Robert J. Baker will be installed as the Fourth Bishop of Birmingham in Alabama. Then on Wednesday of this week, the ten priests who constitute our diocesan College of Consultors will meet in Charleston to elect a priest who will serve as our diocesan administrator until Pope Benedict names the Thirteenth Bishop of Charleston. Between this Wednesday’s election and the installation of our next bishop, the diocesan administrator will have all of the authority of a diocesan bishop, except for those acts which require one to be in the Order of Bishops (like ordaining priests), and the life of the Church in South Carolina will go on without interruption. Since the announcement on August 14th of Bishop Baker’s transfer to Birmingham, many parishioners have asked how long we will be without a bishop, and the honest answer is, No one knows. The process for the selection of bishops is largely secret and takes place far removed from public sight, and in the recent past, it has often taken far more than a year to fill vacant dioceses in the United States. So, we don’t know how long it will be before the new Bishop of Charleston is named, but we do know a little bit about the steps which will lead to his selection. We are part of the ecclesiastical Province of Atlanta, made up of the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Atlanta and the Suffragan Dioceses of Charleston, Savannah, Raleigh, and Charlotte. The bishops of the Province meet every year to coordinate the work of the five dioceses, and among their tasks is to submit the names of priests who should be considered for the episcopate to the Apostolic Nuncio (or papal ambassador) to the United States. The Nuncio keeps on file these names and those he receives from all the other Provinces in the country, and when a vacancy occurs, he recommends to the Congregation of Bishops in Rome those priests whom he believes should be considered for appointment. The Congregation of Bishops is one of the departments or dicasteries of the Roman Curia which assist the Pope in fulfilling his mission as the pastor of the universal Church, and it is composed of Cardinals from around the world who, among other tasks, make recommendations about the selection of new bishops and the transfer of bishops to other dioceses. From the names he receives, the Pope either selects a bishop or asks for a new list of names. Then, when a man has been selected, he is free to accept or refuse the appointment. Only when all of these steps have been completed and someone has accepted the position is the announcement made about the new bishop, and since this process is so complex, we should anticipate a long wait for our new shepherd. So let us begin now to pray for a diocesan pastor after the Heart of Christ. Father Newman