Greg DalyIreland’s newest bishop has said the Vatican’s ‘baby bishops’ course was a valuable opportunity for networking and learning best practice from elsewhere in the world.
Bishop-elect Fintan Monahan, who will be ordained Bishop of Killaloe this Sunday, September 25, said that the annual training course was “great – a very good experience, probably more so from the point of view of just meeting the other 150 guys who were on it and in the same boat, and establishing contact with the guys from the English speaking world”.
Content
While praising the content of the course, Bishop-elect Monahan said that encounters with his fellow new bishops were probably even more advantageous than the course’s official content.
“It was great to meet the guys and establish what issues they have, and what’s working well in those dioceses and what’s not working and what the problems are, that sort of things,” he told The Irish Catholic, adding, “from that point of view it was fantastic”. Among these, he said, were bishops with Irish connections, not least the new Cork-born Los Angeles auxiliary bishop, Dr David O’Connell.
Bishop-elect Monahan said that of all the challenges he and other new bishops will face, vocations was paramount.
“One of the things I was really interested in was the promotion of vocations and the priesthood, and it was interesting that in some of the American dioceses it wasn’t going so well and others it was, so I was trying to tap into that,” he said. Describing how while working in vocations promotion in Tuam he had heard of successes in such dioceses as Dallas, and so was glad to meet and get advice from Bishop Kevin Farrell, the Irish-born Bishop of Dallas who is to head the Vatican’s new Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life.
Leadership
Commenting on the comment of the course, which featured talks on matters as diverse as diocesan finances and spiritual leadership, and relations with other religions, he also singled out for praise the presentation on child protection led by Cardinal Sean O’Malley, which included a contribution from Ireland’s Marie Collins.