Pope Francis could face key choices on bishops in 2017

ROME
Crux

John L. Allen Jr. January 4, 2017
EDITOR

ROME – By now, we already know much of what’s on Pope Francis’s plate in 2017, including two confirmed trips – Fatima in May, and India and Bangladesh probably later in the year – and the likelihood of a couple more, one to Africa (perhaps Congo and South Sudan) and one to Latin America (beginning with Colombia.)

The pontiff will also make quick stops in Milan and Genoa inside Italy, meet bishops from around the world in Rome making ad limina visits, receive dignitaries and heads of state, preside over the usual liturgies for Holy Week, continue meeting with his C9 council of cardinal advisers to wrap up an overhaul of the Roman Curia, and so on.

With Francis, however, it’s often what you don’t see coming that really tells the tale.

Trying to predict what this maverick pope will do is a fool’s errand. Yet we can at least say that in 2017, he’ll have the chance to continue doing something arguably more important than almost anything else in terms of framing his legacy and shaping culture in the Church, which is naming bishops.

As a longtime friend of mine who works in the Vatican likes to say, in the Catholic Church a good bishop can do an enormous amount of good, and a bad bishop can do an even greater amount of harm!

Bishops generally enjoy wide latitude to run their shops as they see fit – a point that’s been given an exclamation point of late by the contrasting ways various bishops have chosen to implement the pope’s document on the family, Amoris Laetita. As a result, perhaps no single thing any pope ever does is more consequential than the kinds of bishops he appoints.

We got another small but telling reminder on Wednesday, when Francis replaced Bishop Fred Henry of Calgary in Canada with Bishop William McGrattan.

Henry is a hero to the strongly pro-life camp in the Church, among other things because of his refusal to permit a government-backed vaccination program against a sexually transmitted disease in Catholic schools because he believed it promoted promiscuity, while McGrattan is seen as a more “Pope Francis” kind of bishop whose focus is generally on dialogue and cooperation over confrontation

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