Listening to the people of God is important, says newly-appointed Dicastery for Bishops' head Archbishop Robert Prevost (pictured).

A good bishop is "a pastor, capable of being close to the members of the community, starting with the priests for whom the bishop is father and brother," Prevost says.

He must be able "to live this closeness to all, without excluding anyone."

While nuncios are asked to consult with some laypeople when identifying potential candidates to serve as bishops, that consultation should expand, he says.

"We had an interesting reflection among the members of the Dicastery on this issue."

Because a bishop is called to serve an entire diocese, not just the priests, "listening to the people of God is also important.

"If a candidate is not known by anyone among his people, it is difficult — not impossible, but difficult — for him to truly become pastor of a community, of a local church.

"So, it is important that the process is a little more open to listening to different members of the community."

This doesn't mean a local church chooses its pastor, "as if being called to be a bishop was the result of a democratic vote."

Broader view

Prevost thinks a much broader view is needed, and the apostolic nunciatures help a lot.

"I believe that little by little we need to open up more, to listen a little more to the religious and the laity."

A good bishop does not "give in to the temptation to live isolated, separated in a palace, satisfied with a certain social level or a certain level within the Church.

"And we must not hide behind an idea of authority that no longer makes sense today. The authority we have is to serve, to accompany priests, to be pastors and teachers."

He noted the preoccupation with teaching doctrine and how to live the faith.

But we risk forgetting our first task - to teach what it means to know Jesus Christ and to bear witness to our closeness to the Lord, he says.

"This comes first: to communicate the beauty of the faith, the beauty and joy of knowing Jesus. It means that we ourselves are living it and sharing this experience."

Church unity

Three key theme words in the synod on synodality are participation, communion and mission, he says. They describe a bishop's role in the church.

"The bishop is called to this charism, to live the spirit of communion, to promote unity in the church, unity with the Pope."

That is part of being Catholic, "because without Peter, where is the church? Jesus prayed for this at the Last Supper, ‘That all may be one,' and it is this unity that we wish to see in the Church."

"The lack of unity is a wound that the Church suffers, a very painful one.

"Divisions and polemics in the church do not help anything. We bishops especially must accelerate this movement toward unity, toward communion in the church."

Source

• America magazine

French Salesian Sr Yvonne Reungoat made the comments to Vida Nueva, a Spanish publication.

Reungoat told the publication that while there is no perfect bishop, he has to be a shepherd who is "close to the people entrusted to him, he has to know how to involve priests, laity and religious, and people of different generations".

"To be a bishop, one must have the ability to listen, both to those who have the same ideas and to those who protest.

"Is not easy," she added.

Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, who heads the Dicastery for Bishops, once told Vida Nueva that "30% of those chosen to be bishops reject the appointment".

Vida Nueva asked Sister Reungoat what might explain this situation.

"There may be a difficulty in accepting the responsibility of being bishop of a particular church with all the joys, challenges and complaints that it entails," she said.

Sister Reungoat, who headed the congregation of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians (Salesians) until October 2021, told Vida Nueva that it is important for women to have a role in naming new bishops.

The presence of women in the dicastery will allow for views and a sensitivity or awareness that are both common among men and women and "complementary", she said.

Women are more likely to be working very closely and have "direct contact" with people and situations "on the ground," she said. "We have knowledge that starts from reality. This experience is also about listening and dialoguing with this reality."

Having this "complementary vision" can help get "closer to reality, which is complex" and varied since bishops serve in different parts of the world. Sr Reungoat said that the dicastery must study and discern much information from the different nunciatures.

Seeing more women represented at high levels of the church may make women feel more involved, she said.

However, having a woman in a particular position "does not mean that the situation will automatically change. There needs to be a reciprocal openness".

In mid-July, Pope Francis named 14 new members to the dicastery responsible for helping the pope choose bishops. For the first time ever, the members included women: two religious and one lay.

Before Pope Francis' reform of the Roman Curia took effect in June, members of the dicastery were only cardinals and a few bishops.

Sources

• Catholic News
• Vida Nueva

After the recent resignations of Cardinal Philippe Barbarin of Lyon and Archbishop Michel Aupetit of Paris, and then the controversial legacies left by Archbishop Jean-Pierre Cattenoz in Avignon and Bishop Emmanuel Lafont in Cayenne (French Guyana), as well as the severe sanction that forced the Diocese of Fréjus-Toulon to postpone the presbyteral ordinations planned for the end of the month, one wonders who's next...

Certainly, these cases cover different situations. But they all show how difficult it is to be a bishop in France today.

No wonder it is becoming increasingly difficult to find candidates who are qualified or even willing to accept an episcopal appointment.

This is a cause for concern, given the pastoral role of the bishop as the foundation of the institution and guarantor of the Catholic unity.

This is not just a Church crisis, but it's more generally a lack of confidence in institutions.

Politicians are not spared either! Those who accept public responsibilities find themselves on the front line of criticism.

In an increasingly "archipelagic" society, where social media is a formidable accelerator of division, it is clearly no easier today to "make society" than to "make Church"...

It is also true that bishops have been extremely weakened by the CIASE report on sexual abuse in the Church, which was published last October.

The liberation of victims' voices greatly destabilized priests. But the abuse report also directly affected the bishops.

Indeed, there should be no doubt about this: for some, it was a cause for deep soul searching; for others, it was something impossible to hear.

In speaking of a "systemic crisis" of abuse, the authors of the CIASE report clearly blamed the institutional Church for concealing the truth. And thus, those at the head - the bishops - were also blamed.

The 20th Century made the bishop the strong man of the Church. Everything rests on him, which was not the case in the past, when princes, lords and other canons were involved in governing — and controlling — religion.

Today, the bishop alone embodies the institution, for better or for worse.

Vatican II took note of this evolution, without providing for more collective forms of governance.

The result is an excessive centralization of power that isolates them and makes them vulnerable, all the more so in a period of crisis. We have passed from a generation of builder bishops at the beginning of the 20th Century to a generation of exhausted prelates who manage a crumbling patrimony.

In the eyes of public opinion, they are quickly becoming the first to be held accountable for a situation of which they are not guilty.

How can this be remedied?

Through synodality, answers Pope Francis. A synodality that consists in putting all Catholics in a position of responsibility. The goal is to move from a Church of people obeying a leader, to a Church where everyone is a witness to the Gospel.

It would still be necessary for Catholics to agree to take their part... And for bishops to be capable of allowing a form of creativity and initiative to be expressed outside themselves, while ensuring the coherence of the whole.

Basically, this is not surprising.

We feel the same need to find new forms of citizen participation in politics. And the business world is also well aware that management is no longer the same as it was in the past, but that creating a network requires skill.

The same is true for the Church.

It is necessary to rethink the training of managers, to diversify their profiles, to foresee procedures for collegiality, to have places where all believers can speak, and to have bodies for regulation, evaluation and control.

Plain and simple, Church governance has to be brought into the 21st Century.

• Isabelle de Gaulmyn is a senior editor at La Croix and a former Vatican correspondent.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

For those who are used to the generally compliant tones that have characterized the Catholic faithful's relationship to the hierarchy up till now, it must be said that this is changing.

Bishops in France are now being directly and harshly criticized by "ordinary Catholics" following the publication of the Sauvé Report, which brought to light serious failures in the way Church leaders in the country have handled sex abuse cases.

Increasingly, Catholics are openly challenging the legitimacy of their bishops. The lay faithful no longer tolerate the excesses of solitary power.

They also want to have a say and, in particular, they want to be a part of the process that decides who becomes a bishop.

Because the entire paradox is there. In the Church, the bishop is all-powerful.

It's ludicrous to think the pope can appoint all the world's bishops

No matter how brutal it is to call this into question, it is merely a backlash against a system of governance where power is concentrated in the hands of one man who holds all the keys to a diocese.

If a bishop makes a mistake or if he is not up to the task, it is the entire Catholic community that has to pay the consequences.

And the local Church is permanently penalized.

In view of the importance of the position, choosing the wrong man can end up being disastrous.

The appointment of bishops is undoubtedly one of the Church's most archaic procedures. It's ludicrous to think that the pope can individually appoint them all.

If we take into account that there are more than 5,000 bishops in the world, we can see that even a pope who never sleeps could never accomplish this task.

A process protected by the "pontifical secret"

Bishops are actually chosen by the papal nuncio — the pope's ambassador in a country — or by influential cardinals or bishops in Rome. Or by a combination of the above.

The process of selecting the candidates remains confidential, even ultra-confidential since it is protected by the famous "pontifical secret".

This means that those who are consulted for these appointments must not tell anyone that they have been contacted. They are not to disclose the criteria by which the candidate is vetted, nor what questions they have been asked.

One must obey the pontifical secret on pain of ex-communication, the Catholic Church's most serious penalty.

So, in the end, it's mostly bishops and priests who are consulted.

The questionnaire they are given aims to ensure that the candidate for bishop has no notable faults.

He must be totally orthodox in doctrine, never have spoken in favour of ordaining married men (let alone women), be "emotionally balanced", have an authentic prayer life and so on.

In short, the aim is more about avoiding problematic cases than making a choice based on positive criteria that reveal a real capacity to exercise future responsibilities.

Those most affected have no say

The system for choosing bishops was never revised after the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). It remains clerical and lacks transparency.

Of course, the first among them - the Bishop of Rome - is actually elected.

Admittedly this election process takes place in the secrecy of the conclave. But it involves real debates and discussions in a collegial process that can give rise to several rounds of voting.

However, when it comes to choosing diocesan bishops, the Catholic faithful - those most affected by the choice - have absolutely no say.

We are not asking the Church to organize elections in every diocese! But between an open democratic process and a monolithic centralized appointment policy, a happy medium should be possible.

At the very least, the Church could come up with a guide of good practices.

The religious peculiarity of the institution does not justify the anachronistic way it appoints its spiritual leaders.

• Isabelle de Gaulmyn is editor-in-chief of La Croix L'Hebdo weekly magazine and is a former Vatican correspondent.
• First published in La-Croix International. Republished with permission.

The Pope has asked his so-called C9 international council of cardinals to do this.

He wants them to look particularly at the qualities needed in a bishop today.

The council met with the Pope from September 14-16.

Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi, SJ, said one of the primary roles of the C9 council is to advise the Pope on Church governance.

With more than 150 new bishops being named each year in the Latin-rite church, identifying suitable candidates is a normal part of the governance of the universal Church, the spokesman said.

"There is a long process" for naming bishops, Fr Lombardi said.

It includes "questionnaires that are sent out to people who may know the candidates and then the information is gathered, usually by the nunciature".

Then recommendations are forwarded either to the Congregation for Bishops or, in the case of the Church's mission lands, to the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples.

The congregations make recommendations to the Pope.

Obviously, Fr Lombardi said, the key part of the process is formulating the questions and collecting information based on the characteristics essential for a bishop "in the world today, what might be the requirements and, therefore, what questions should one be attentive to in [developing] the questionnaires".

The need to review the questions and the process as a whole is constant, he said.

A statement issued after the meeting said, "naturally the theme will need to be explored further and developed in collaboration" with the Roman Curia offices assisting the Pope in identifying candidates.

Sources

• Catholic News Service
• Image: Catholic Herald

University of Canberra chaplain Fr Paul McGavin explained his criteria in a 2000-word article in L'Espresso.

He started by stating that ordination does not change a man.

"He has access to the authority and grace of Holy Orders. Whether or not these are enacted in important measure depends upon the human qualities that are present in the one who is ordained," he wrote.

Therefore selection criteria need to focus on human qualities and the way that grace is manifested in those human qualities.

Fr McGavin wrote that it is from this perspective that his 12 criteria are put forward.

In summary, firstly, a candidate must be a manly man, confident in his own masculinity.

Second, he must be a man of integrity who can be trusted.

Third, he must be a man of principle, insisting on due process and natural justice, proceeding canonically rather than arbitrarily.

Fourth, fear of God is important.

Fifth, he must be inclusive. "Has he as a priest pastor worked to build a community where diverse people find a place and a welcome. . . . Has he shown himself as a man of acute listening skills so that he hears deeply what is being said to him?"

Sixth, he must be a man of prayer, so that people encounter a man who "practises the presence of God".

Seventh, is he humble in a robust way? If he is not, "the Church will have a man who is wilful and who abuses his position, is threatened by others, who puts down others and who thinks himself to be what he is not".

Eighth, he must love beauty, and be a man who "communicates the beauty of God from small and lowly things through to exalted things".

Ninth, he must have a history of proven intellectual accomplishment.

Tenth, practical implementation capacities are important.

Eleventh, he must be able to decide what not to do.

Twelfth, the Church needs men of deep love who try to imitate Christ, and don't just do their own thing.

Sources

• L'Espresso
• Image: Goulburn Post