Today is an important day in the life of the Church of Boston as our Holy Father, Pope Francis, has announced that Father Robert Reed and Father Mark O’Connell have been named Auxiliary Bishops of Boston.
I am most grateful to our Holy Father Pope Francis who has recognized in them the qualities necessary to be Bishops in the Church. I am also very grateful to Bishops-elect Reed and O’Connell for their willingness to accept the Holy Father’s call to serve.
We had a press conference at St. John’s Seminary to introduce the newly named bishops.
CatholicTV streamed it live and I would like to share it with you.
The Archdiocese of Boston is blessed with wonderful priests — and I thank God every day for the gift of the priests who serve with me and serve the People of God in humility and love. Bishops-elect Reed and O’Connell are two fine examples of what the true face of the Priesthood is in the Archdiocese of Boston.
Today was a full day as later in the afternoon we celebrated the ordination of Archbishop Paul Russell at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross.
Archbishop Russell has been serving the Holy See for many years in the diplomatic service and most recently was charge d’affairs in Taiwan. He has been appointed nuncio to Turkey and Turkmenistan and the Holy Father named him an Archbishop.
We will chronicle his episcopal ordination in next week’s blog post.
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And now, to the events of the week.
Last Thursday we celebrated the 40th anniversary of the first class of permanent deacons in the Archdiocese of Boston. It was Cardinal Medeiros who initiated the first program and who ordained these men.
We celebrated Mass at the Pastoral Center and we were very pleased to be joined by quite a number of deacons. After the Mass we had a luncheon at which we presented each deacon with a small gift as remembrance of their anniversary.
In my homily, I commented on the fact that they were pioneers and how challenging it was because people did not have an understanding at the time of what a permanent deacon was. Yet, they very generously and courageously embraced this vocation that has made such an impact on the Church. I expressed how grateful we are to them.
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Friday morning, we went to Regina Cleri to celebrate Mass with the Golden priest jubilarians, those celebrating 50 years of ordination. It was quite a big group of jubilarians this year and we also celebrated the 100th birthday of Msgr. Paul McManus.
It was a very beautiful day and after the Mass we had a reception outside followed by a lunch together.
We calculated that the men in that ordination class had celebrated about half million Masses over their lives as priests. It is just such an amazing legacy of faith!
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From there I went to attend the chapter of my Capuchin province, the St. Augustine province. We have elected a new provincial, Father Thomas Betz.
During the chapter we heard some very encouraging reports on vocations. We also heard from Father Jonathan Williams, a classmate of mine who is the vice provincial from Papua New Guinea. He spoke about the mission there, which was started about 60 years ago with six friars, and now there are 60 friars.
We also had a report from the vice provincial from Puerto Rico which was also very encouraging. There they are trying to establish more relationships with the friars in Cuba, Haiti, Santo Domingo and the other islands nearby. Like Papua New Guinea they have also grown. When I was a sub deacon I worked in Puerto Rico in the town of Utuado, and at that time all the friars were from either the United States or Germany — I think there may have been one or two Puerto Ricans. Now, the situation is exactly the reversed, all the Friars are Puerto Ricans and there may be one or two Americans.
This is a replica of the statue of our Lady of Mercy, which is in the Capuchin shrine in Bavaria Altotting, which is where St. Conrad, a friar from our province, was the porter. So we have had this long connection with the Bavarian province and that famous shrine.
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Wednesday, I addressed the annual gathering of faith formation leaders held at the Pastoral Center. We are very pleased to see the excellent response, the large number of people who came to participate in the training and discussions around the subject of evangelization.
I was very happy to be able to greet them and thank them personally for all of the generosity and their efforts on behalf of the new evangelization.
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Then at noon, we celebrated a Mass at the Pastoral Center for our jubilarian priests celebrating 25 years of ordination, as well as for three religious brothers, one of whom was an OMI celebrating 50 years of religious life and the other two were Xaverian brothers, one celebrating 50 years of religious life and another 70 years of religious life.
I was very happy to celebrate this occasion and express to them how grateful we are for their vocations.
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Thursday morning, I met with Olivia Colombo whom we selected as the winner of the Witness to Life Video Contest, run by the Office for Lifelong Faith Formation.
She is a sophomore at Sacred Heart School in Kingston and she had prepared a video about the pro-life group at her school.
It was very lovely to meet her with her parents and Dr. Mike Gill, her school Principal.
She told me that she had been part of the March for Life in Washington, DC and prepared this very clever video.
I watched on her iPhone
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Then later that day I was visited by the consul general of Taiwan and his vice consul, who came to have lunch with me at the Pastoral Center. They were representing the vice president of Taiwan who wanted to be present for the ordination of Msgr. Paul Russell but was unable to come.
The Taiwanese government and people are so grateful for the ministry of Msgr. Russell in Taiwan and for the many good works of the Catholic Church there. Although the Catholic population of Taiwan is very small, there are many universities, colleges, schools, nursing homes, clinics and other institutions run by the Catholic Church in Taiwan. The institutional footprint of the Church there is enormous.
They brought me a very interesting gift.
I understand it’s a replica of one of the most important works of art in Taiwan — a jade cabbage.
Clearly the cabbage is a very significant symbol to the Chinese people. We Irish people just eat them in boiled dinners!
It will certainly make an interesting conversation piece!
Until my next post
In Christ
Cardinal Sean