NEW JERSEY
Whispers in the Loggia
For all the smiles at the cameras and talk of a smooth transition, the difference between Newark Catholicism’s present and future can be boiled down to this: while John Myers prefers to be addressed as “His Grace” – the British/Canadian style for archbishops – whatever title his successor might be saddled with, the next metropolitan of New Jersey will forever be known to all as, simply, “Bernie.”
The mottoes are instructive, too: the incumbent chose for himself the refined, maybe even esoteric “Mysterium ecclesiae luceat” (“Let the mystery of the church shine forth”), a reference to the Vatican II constitution Lumen Gentium. His coadjutor’s is straightforward and in English – two words: “Only Jesus.”
Shot into the stratosphere as shepherd-in-waiting of the nation’s ninth-largest diocese, Bernie Hebda’s ascent to North Jersey has been described as “the first truly Francis appointment” on these shores: a distinctly pastoral, nonideological figure with a penchant for sharp ideas, hard work, close ties and creating oceans of goodwill across all sorts of divides.
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