The Bishop is Dead. Long live the Bishop

[The Jacobin]

My bishop has died. Bishop Delaney died after a long fight with cancer this morning.

This was a man I served and loved from afar. He was the most calming and reassuring person I ever knew. He had been sick for several years and had been able to perform only a couple of public RCIA rites in the last few years. For the last three years he has been too sick with chemo to come to the mass welcoming new members of the diocese, sending the chancellor instead.

Ironically, I just made babysitting arrangements yesterday for tomorrow night (Wednesday). Our new bishop, Monsignor Kevin Vann of Springfield, Illinois was to be named coadjutor bishop tomorrow (which means the Pope knew Bishop Delaney was very sick and named Vann to be the successor). The ordination will still take place, but will be very different.

[UrbScotty]

1. Our bishop died suddenly last year.

He was 59 years old. They went to his home, and there he was, a once charismatic, involved bishop dead just months after he became bishop.

We got a new bishop a few weeks ago.

[DemBones DemBones]

2. Condolences for the loss of Bishop Delaney.

The ordination will certainly be different, sad, but perhaps Delaney wanted to go and make way for his successor? Will Vann be replacing Delaney now? I don't know exactly what a coadjutor bishop is.

We lost Archbishop James Lyke to kidney cancer when he was only 62 or 63, a very sad thing coming only a year after Archbishop Eugene Marino resigned, admitting to an affair with a woman, which the medis relished, of course. Thus we lost the first Hispanic and first black archbishop in the U.S. Actually, Marino had a black mother and Latino father, and Lyke was black, so you might say we lost the first Latino and first two blacks, in a weird sort of statistical sense.

They were both fine men, too, I thought, though I knew them only through the media, mostly the archdiocesan weekly newspaper. No one seemed to dislike either of them. Archbishop Marino went to a center for priests with addictions for therapy (the affair was bizarre and I think he could have been an alcoholic, though I have never heard or read it suggested.) After a year or two, he began counseling priest-patients there, was said to be very humble despite technically maintaining his title. He died a few years ago, only in his sixties.

[UrbScotty]

3. I'm, sorry about what happened in your diocese as well.

A coadjutor bishop is a bishop who automatically becomes bishop of a diocese when the current bishop dies or retires. If a bishop feels that he is nearing retirement or is very ill, he may ask the Pope to appoint a coadjutor bishop. The coadjutor will assist the bishop until he retires or dies, at which point, like I said, he becomes bishop.

In my other post, I mentioned that our bishop died months after he became bishop. He had served a coadjutor bishop of our diocese for a few months beforehand.

[DemBones DemBones]

4. Thanks for your sympathy and for answering my question re: coadjutor

bishop. Must the bishop ask the Pope to do this? I don't think Archbishop Lyke did so, perhaps not realizing how bad his kidney cancer was until the very end I mean that it was after Lyke's death that the Holy Father appointed a bishop from Carolina as our archbishop -- unless my memory is entirely faulty.

[UrbScotty]

5. Yes, the bishop does request it. (nt)