Thoughts from the Cathedra

Dear Friends in Christ,

New Bishops School in Rome has come to a conclusion, culminating yesterday morning in an audience with Pope Leo XIV and the 120 new bishops ordained this past year from across the world. We began this final day with Mass at the Altar of the Chair, just under the famous stained-glass window of the Holy Spirit and directly behind Bernini's magnificent baldacchino at the main altar.

After Mass we met with the Holy Father as a group. What was so remarkable was Pope Leo's down-to-earth style. He was extremely kind, respectful, energetic, and pastorally insightful - and even at times showed a wonderful sense of humor and fraternal joy with his new bishops.

After the group meeting each bishop had the opportunity to greet the Holy Father personally. I extended to him greetings from the Diocese of Tucson and assured him of our best wishes for and full support of his ministry to which he said, "Thank you." He shared that he remembers Tucson fondly from a visit he made some years ago. I told him that I/we think of him often by the fact that we share patron saints with him - St. Augustine. He was very happy to hear of this. I promised him that we would pray for him and asked for his prayers for us, and he smiled and said that he would certainly do so.

These nine days have been a profoundly meaningful experience for the very fact that I've met bishops from across the world and learned about their ministry, sharing with them some of my ministry. The conversations have illustrated just how diverse the Church really is. I visited at length with Bishop-elect Anthony Corcoran, SJ, a spiritual son of the Diocese of Tucson, being baptized at St. Andrew Parish in Sierra Vista, and who will soon become the Bishop of Kyrgyzstan. His ministry is truly missionary as he will be serving just 800 Catholics in an almost entirely Muslim country. While a small Church, his diocese will make a massive contribution to the Mystical Body of Christ in the mountains of Central Asia. His missionary example marks centuries of great Jesuit missionary work and gives me hope by his zeal for souls in a faraway place. Of course, nothing is faraway to God!

I also met bishops from Amazonia in South America, the Andes of Peru, Mindanao in the Philippines, South Australia, Herzegovina, London, Nairobi, Papua New Guinea and so many places in between. In each case, their lived experience impressed me greatly as bishops on mission. This is one lesson that I take from this week - that we must always stretch ourselves out of management and into mission, even in modern-day United States. And what is the mission exactly? It remains, from Pope Francis of happy memory and now with Pope Leo, the art of synodality. 

In some ways, synodality has been a challenging task from the start. To be a synodal Church requires a reflective disposition, from the Holy Father to the Cardinals to the Bishops to the whole People of God. From the Greek language meaning Way Together - Syn Hodos, the synodal way is not so much something that we must do as a Church, but rather, it is something that we must be as a Church. It is a way of being Church. Many of you have listened to our podcast, Being Church with Bishop Misko. This is precisely where arrive at that moniker. We aren't called so much to concentrate on doing the things of Church, like we are professional churchgoers, as much as we are called to focus on being Church.

As we have heard from the officials of the different dicasteries (Vatican departments) this week, an essential synodal ingredient is listening. A synodal Church is a listening Church. But even that phraseology must be nuanced. Listening can't simply be the biological process of hearing sound - of the ear drum vibrating when sound enters the ear so that we can hear different noises. Listening in a synodal way is multi layered. Yes, we listen with our ears, but we also listen with our hearts, our minds, our souls, with our very being. So, listening in a synodal Church is cultivating the awareness of the people around us. A listening heart is an aware heart. It is a heart that is aware of God presence in and through all people.

Now we bishops return to our dioceses with a recalibrated focus on The Way Together as successors to the Apostles in our particular churches in union with Pope Leo.

I'll see you all in the Eucharist!

Bp. Misko