PENNSYLVANIA
Lehigh Valley Live
By Jim Deegan | For lehighvalleylive.com
Bishop John Barres is leaving the Diocese of Allentown.
Barres, the leader of Catholics in a five-county region that includes the Lehigh Valley, has been appointed by Pope Francis as bishop of Rockville Centre, N.Y. The diocese consists of Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island, and its 1.5 million Catholics make it the sixth-largest diocese by population in the nation.
Barres, 56, becomes the first Allentown bishop transferred to another diocese in the diocese’s 55-year history. He has headed Allentown for more than seven years.
Barres became bishop here in July 2009.
“I must…thank the priests and the entire people of God of the Diocese of Allentown, where I have had the great blessing of serving as bishop for the last seven-and-a-half years,” he said in a statement.
“You will all always be in my heart, my memories, my prayers and my Masses as I remember our days of ‘holiness and mission’ together.”
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