TEXAS
Whispers in the Loggia
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2013
Gig ‘Em, Bishop Mike – Austin’s Beloved Sis Off to San Angelo
Aggies, you’ve been waiting on this one for a long time… and finally – amid what’s already American Catholicism’s biggest night – está aquí.
At Roman Noon, the Pope named Msgr Mike Sis, 53, heretofore vicar-general of Austin – a beloved, legendary figure who built St Mary’s Catholic Center at Texas A&M into the Stateside church’s premier campus ministry outpost – as bishop of San Angelo.
In the West Texas post, the Jersey-born Sis succeeds another revered Bishop Michael who knows the “smell of the sheep”: Mike Pfeifer, who’s led the sprawling, mostly rural diocese encompassing Midland, Abilene, Odessa and 29 counties in all since 1985, having reached the retirement age of 75 in May 2012. An Oblate of Mary Immaculate, the Rio Grande-born missionary – named to succeed the future Archbishop Joseph Fiorenza on the native son’s return to Houston – is said to have felt cheated out of his religious vocation on his appointment as bishop, and has already started making plans to begin his retirement in the assignment his superiors were sending him before the hat came: namely, Africa.
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