Welcome Archbishop Felix Machado

I’ll be away for the month of July, but you’re all in for a treat. Archbishop Felix Machado is coming with an exceptional reputation preceding him.

The priests of the diocese have been telling me all about how he lived in the Taizé community in France for seven years, served in a refugee camp in Bangladesh, earned a doctorate from Fordham University, and served until 2008 on the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.

Pope Benedict XVI gave him the personal title of Archbishop and named him head of the Diocese of Nashik, India.

I’ll be able to spend time with him too, overlapping with him during the month of August. Hopefully you will have already benefited from his stories and experiences.

I’m grateful to Monsignor Frank Caldwell, the pastor of Curé D’Ars in Merrick, for recommending him to us. He’s a close friend of the Archbishop and was happy to recommend that he accept our invitation - a testament to the good reputation that you yourselves have with the priests of the diocese. I’m proud of you for that.

So thank you, again, for your goodness to the priests we ask to cover the parish during the summer, and for your openness on this celebration of the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul to the fact that the Catholic Church is both a firm foundation and a living word that goes forth on mission.

You know that I have not hidden my criticism of the thinking that importing foreign priests can “fix” the vocation crisis. Nevertheless, we are Catholic. And the Catholic Church is a worldwide communion. Nor is a parish an isolated Christian community. We belong to a larger Local Church in communion with Rome called a diocese, and those dioceses have bishops who are the successors of the Apostles sent from Christ Himself.

Therefore, we are Peter and Paul. We are rooted firmly in the historicity of Christ’s life with Saint Peter, but we also go out boldly with Saint Paul to live with our brothers and sisters of other nations, that we might become their brothers and sisters in Christ, as He prayed at the Last Supper that we would all be one.

To have Archbishop Felix here with us, who has dedicated so much of his life to dialogue with peoples of other faiths, is to receive a favor from God, who continues to be so good to us here. +