By Barb Arland-Fye
Editor
“There is an appointed time for everything, and a time for every affair under the heavens,” the author of Ecclesiastes tells us. Tomorrow is our appointed time! We will celebrate the ordination and installation of Bishop Dennis Walsh as our 10th Bishop of the Diocese of Davenport on Sept. 27 at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Davenport. Let us rejoice, be glad and offer prayers in thanksgiving!
The Bishop’s Planning Committee anticipates 1 cardinal, 19 bishops, 112 priests, 33 deacons, 29 women religious, 7 Davenport Diocese seminarians, 1 Toledo Diocese seminarian, 24 family members of Bishop Walsh and 38 Ohio friends in attendance at the Mass of Ordination. Add to those numbers more than several-hundred faithful from throughout the Davenport Diocese who will attend in person.
The cathedral cannot accommodate all 83,438 Catholics in our diocese, so people who cannot attend may watch a live stream of the liturgy at 2 p.m. via the cathedral’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@shcdavenport6262.
In a letter published in last week’s Sept. 19 Catholic Messenger, Bishop-elect Walsh expressed gratitude and hope as he prepares to enter his appointed time to serve the people of our diocese, as God has willed. “It is a privilege for me to be called to serve this diocese, and I look forward to walking this journey of faith with each of you,” he wrote, addressing the faithful.
His commitment to walking with the people of God on this pilgrim journey was evident to the Messenger during a visit last month to the parishes Bishop-elect Walsh served in the Toledo Diocese. “He’s very engaged with the people. Very down to earth,” says Sister Immacolata Scarogni, a member of the Sisters of Christian Charity, who ministers at the three parishes that then-Father Walsh led in Delphos, Landeck and Spencerville, Ohio.
“One year, he taught the high school Spanish classes (at the parish school) because we did not have a teacher for that class,” said Sister Susan Faist, SND, of St. John the Evangelist Parish in Delphos. “What makes him a good priest is that he relates to you; doesn’t he?” Dave Kroeger of St. John the Baptist Parish in Landeck, asked Aiden, his 14-year-old son who treasured serving at the altar with Father Walsh.
Through the power of his episcopal ordination, Bishop-elect Walsh assumes the responsibility of sanctifying, teaching and governing as the spiritual leader of the Church in the Diocese of Davenport, which encompasses 22 counties in southeast Iowa. He has just returned from Rome, where he participated in a comprehensive formation course the Vatican provides for new bishops.
Bishop-elect Walsh described his appointment to the episcopacy as “the shock of my lifetime.” Ordained to the priesthood 32 years ago, he has served with humility in persona Christi and promises to be a “shepherd who listens and leads with humility.” But he needs us, the faithful, to teach him what it means to be a bishop in the lived experience of our lives in this diocese.
He acknowledged that need on the day the Vatican announced his appointment, June 25. “It has been the people of the parishes I have pastored that taught me to be a pastor … I am confident that you, the people of this diocese, will teach me to be a good bishop and shepherd,” Bishop-elect Walsh told us during that public announcement in Davenport.
His predecessor, now-Archbishop Thomas Zinkula, reflected those same thoughts as he prepared for his installation as Archbishop of the Dubuque Archdiocese last year. “When I came here, I needed the people of our diocese to teach me how to be a bishop. It wasn’t classroom instruction. It was about trying on that role for size and finding my way. I think I’ve grown in confidence, being a bishop feels more natural now.”
Bishop-elect Walsh’s episcopal motto is “Into your hands, Lord,” which comes from Luke 23:46. “Have no doubt that this is the Lord’s will,” Bishop Daniel Thomas of the Toledo Diocese advised Bishop-elect Walsh. “You were made for this.”
Let us continue to pray these words from the diocesan prayer we have been praying in anticipation of Bishop-elect Walsh’s ordination and installation:
“Lord our God … grant him, we pray, ‘a spirit of counsel and fortitude, a spirit of knowledge and piety, so that, by faithfully governing the people entrusted to him, he may help build Your Church as a sign of salvation for the world.’”
Barb Arland-Fye, Editor
arland-fye@davenportdiocese.org
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