Priests Concerned Bishop Buckley’s Replacement Will Be an ‘outsider’

Evening Echo
August 20, 2016

http://www.eveningecho.ie/cork-news/priests-concerned-bishop-buckleys-replacement-will-outsider/2512700/

A GROUP of Catholic priests is concerned that the next Bishop of Cork and Ross will be ‘an outsider’, and there has been criticism of the way the Church selects bishops.


The Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) has hit out at the Vatican’s diplomatic representative in Ireland, Papal Nuncio Charles Browne. The association says that since Browne’s appointment, in 2011, he has been recommending bishops who are not from the dioceses they are charged with leading and who do not match the philosophies of Pope Francis.

Bishop John Buckley tendered his retirement two years ago and his successor is expected to be announced in the coming months, but Cork-based priest, Fr Gerry O’Connor, a leader within the ACP, said that there has been no consultation with the diocese.

Fr O’Connor pointed to Kerry, where Bishop Raymond Browne was recommended, despite having spent his career in Roscommon and Sligo. By contrast, Bishop Buckley, appointed by Pope John Paul II, was born in Inchigeela and served in Farranferris and Turner’s Cross, before serving as an Auxillary Bishop of Cork and Ross, and then taking the top job.

This time, the diocese cannot be sure that its bishop will be someone who has experience in Cork.

“NOBODY really knows who has been consulted, or who has been asked to lead the Church in Cork for the next decade or two,” said Fr Gerry O’Connor.

“It’s meant to be a consultative process. The key people in Cork or Kerry dioceses would be consulted, names would emerge, and one would be picked and recommended to the Pope by the Papal Nuncio. “But all the appointments have been people who are not from the dioceses. It’s insulting to the consultative process.”

Fr O’Connor said there is “no personal animosity” with the new bishops, whom he described as “nice men,” but said that they represented an older era in the Church, rather than people who matched Pope Francis’s more open and progressive views. Archbishop Browne was not appointed by Pope Francis, but by Pope Benedict XVI, a far more traditional and conservative Pope.

“We think the current Papal Nuncio is choosing people who are very careful and cautious, not people who have an imagination to be bold. America, in the last few years, has got excellent bishops. They are people who obviously think like Pope Francis,” he said.

In the US, so-called ‘Francis Bishops’ have been appointed in cities like Chicago, and have been credited with major reforming and rebuilding within their dioceses.

Fr O’Connor said that, while those US bishops were doing a fine job, working within that system may have shaped the Papal Nuncio’s views.

Archbishop Browne is from the US himself, where bishops are regularly moved around, spending only a few years in each diocese.

Fr O’Connor said that doesn’t fit into the Irish culture, where the bishop is close to the people and can serve for decades.

Attempts to contact a representative from the Papal Nuncio’s office, to obtain a comment, proved unsuccessful.