Leo and Friends

Sounds like the title of a morning talk show on Fox… that I would never watch. Let me explain.

You can tell a lot about a man based on the company he keeps. Also, I have heard it said that a man is the average of his five closest friends or something along those lines.

Pope Prevost seems to be turning a blind eye towards one of those friends. If accounts are to be believed (and honestly who could tell anymore since every reporter in the world is using AI to “write” their stories) then Leo met with the bishop of Charlotte at length prior to his ascension to the papacy. That same bishop is now revealing to the world his stunning lack of knowledge of the liturgy and doctrine of the Church. You can read all about that and make up your own mind.

But it’s an episcopal appointment I’d like to bring to your attention. And it isn’t the new bishop that concerns me just yet. It’s his boss.

Again, it seems that Cardinal “Jo-To Call-Me-Joe Nighty Night Baby” Tobin has just picked up a new shiny toy in the form of an auxiliary bishop for my home archdiocese of Newark, NJ. Side note: back in the 80’s and 90’s when Teddy McCarrick was running the place and could literally get anything he wanted, it was said of the Newark Archdiocese that one couldn’t swing a dead cat by its tail without hitting a bishop. There were something like 8 of them! I even remember him saying that nowhere on earth save Rome and Sao Paolo had more auxiliaries. It’s not a small diocese by any means but certainly did not warrant that many bishops.

So what of this new guy? Well, as I said, it’s the boss who counts. For Leo to elevate a man to the episcopacy as one of his first acts and to do it for Joe? Seems a bit telling, no?

There is a focus on the fact that he’s an “immigrant” because that’s oh so important, right?

What Joe wants, Joe gets because Joe is friends with Bob (Leo). This isn’t simply a matter of filling a vacancy in a diocese. This is giving a bishop to an already well-staffed place.

Look, there may be nothing to this at all. His appointment could already have been in the works. Oh wait, Leo was in charge of making bishops before becoming pope so he would have known regardless. Am I reading to much here? Possibly. But I learned long ago to pay attention to the seemingly little details like silence when the Mass is being crushed and men being elevated to assist other men who are already suspect and bishops spending time at the beach with their seminarians.

Time will tell; but don’t say the signs weren’t there when the total framework is suddenly in place one day and you wonder how it got this way. One final note… Even if one were to say, “Popes don’t have time to look over every appointment worldwide. Don’t pin anything on him just yet,” remember two things. It’s his job to actually do these things diligently. JPII gave us such luminaries as Howard Hubbard, Ted McCarrick, and Jorge Bergoglio.

Mary, Mother of Priests, pray for us!