In an exceedingly rare appointment of its kind, Pope Francis has named Michael Barber SJ, 58 – a California Jesuit currently serving as a spiritual director at Boston's St John's Seminary – as bishop of Oakland.
Rare... Francis... Jesuit... Boston... "Super-Cardinal"...
Hmm.
At the helm of the roughly 600,000-member NorCal church, the bishop-elect succeeds Salvatore Cordileone, who was sent across the Bay to lead the more prestigious – yet less populous – archdiocese of San Francisco last July.
For purposes of context, the last time a simple priest was named to a Stateside post of this size came at a similarly early point in the last pontificate, when Msgr Kevin Vann – then a pastor in Springfield, Illinois – was tapped in May 2005 as coadjutor of Fort Worth, then a 400,000-member fold, which nearly doubled in size over the subsequent decade due to migration, birthrates and, well, just being Texas church. Yet while Vann was intended to have a period of apprenticeship under Bishop Joseph Delaney, the long-reigning prelate died the day before his successor's ordination, suddenly placing the provided ordinary-in-waiting on the cathedra with no prep. (In his last top-tier appointment on the Stateside bench, B16 named Vann to the 1.3 million-member diocese of Orange last September, and Fort Worth remains vacant.)
Back to the Bay, as indicated yesterday by the Oakland's apostolic administrator – Seattle's retired Archbishop Alex Brunett, who was parachuted into the diocese's reins as a result of Cordileone's fraught transition to "The City" – Barber will be ordained in an astonishingly short timeframe, the rites set for Saturday, 25 May at 11am in the postmodern Cathedral of Christ the Light (above), dubbed by locals on its 2008 opening as the "Space Egg."
The diocese founded in 1962, the fifth bishop of Oakland will be the first appointee to the post who requires episcopal ordination before taking office.
Friday, May 3, 2013
Space Oddity - California Jesuit in Boston launched to Oakland
Rocco Palma
Whispers in the Loggia
May 3, 2013
In an exceedingly rare appointment of its kind, Pope Francis has named Michael Barber SJ, 58 – a California Jesuit currently serving as a spiritual director at Boston's St John's Seminary – as bishop of Oakland.
Rare... Francis... Jesuit... Boston... "Super-Cardinal"...
Hmm.
At the helm of the roughly 600,000-member NorCal church, the bishop-elect succeeds Salvatore Cordileone, who was sent across the Bay to lead the more prestigious – yet less populous – archdiocese of San Francisco last July.
For purposes of context, the last time a simple priest was named to a Stateside post of this size came at a similarly early point in the last pontificate, when Msgr Kevin Vann – then a pastor in Springfield, Illinois – was tapped in May 2005 as coadjutor of Fort Worth, then a 400,000-member fold, which nearly doubled in size over the subsequent decade due to migration, birthrates and, well, just being Texas church. Yet while Vann was intended to have a period of apprenticeship under Bishop Joseph Delaney, the long-reigning prelate died the day before his successor's ordination, suddenly placing the provided ordinary-in-waiting on the cathedra with no prep. (In his last top-tier appointment on the Stateside bench, B16 named Vann to the 1.3 million-member diocese of Orange last September, and Fort Worth remains vacant.)
Back to the Bay, as indicated yesterday by the Oakland's apostolic administrator – Seattle's retired Archbishop Alex Brunett, who was parachuted into the diocese's reins as a result of Cordileone's fraught transition to "The City" – Barber will be ordained in an astonishingly short timeframe, the rites set for Saturday, 25 May at 11am in the postmodern Cathedral of Christ the Light (above), dubbed by locals on its 2008 opening as the "Space Egg."
The diocese founded in 1962, the fifth bishop of Oakland will be the first appointee to the post who requires episcopal ordination before taking office.
In an exceedingly rare appointment of its kind, Pope Francis has named Michael Barber SJ, 58 – a California Jesuit currently serving as a spiritual director at Boston's St John's Seminary – as bishop of Oakland.
Rare... Francis... Jesuit... Boston... "Super-Cardinal"...
Hmm.
At the helm of the roughly 600,000-member NorCal church, the bishop-elect succeeds Salvatore Cordileone, who was sent across the Bay to lead the more prestigious – yet less populous – archdiocese of San Francisco last July.
For purposes of context, the last time a simple priest was named to a Stateside post of this size came at a similarly early point in the last pontificate, when Msgr Kevin Vann – then a pastor in Springfield, Illinois – was tapped in May 2005 as coadjutor of Fort Worth, then a 400,000-member fold, which nearly doubled in size over the subsequent decade due to migration, birthrates and, well, just being Texas church. Yet while Vann was intended to have a period of apprenticeship under Bishop Joseph Delaney, the long-reigning prelate died the day before his successor's ordination, suddenly placing the provided ordinary-in-waiting on the cathedra with no prep. (In his last top-tier appointment on the Stateside bench, B16 named Vann to the 1.3 million-member diocese of Orange last September, and Fort Worth remains vacant.)
Back to the Bay, as indicated yesterday by the Oakland's apostolic administrator – Seattle's retired Archbishop Alex Brunett, who was parachuted into the diocese's reins as a result of Cordileone's fraught transition to "The City" – Barber will be ordained in an astonishingly short timeframe, the rites set for Saturday, 25 May at 11am in the postmodern Cathedral of Christ the Light (above), dubbed by locals on its 2008 opening as the "Space Egg."
The diocese founded in 1962, the fifth bishop of Oakland will be the first appointee to the post who requires episcopal ordination before taking office.
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