Archbishop Mark Coleridge was installed as the seventh Bishop and sixth Archbishop of Brisbane on May 11. He indicated that he is determined to lead in facing “the Church’s greatest challenge in these times”.
Preaching during his Liturgical Reception of him as Archbishop of Brisbane in the Cathedral of St Stephen he said, “Our greatest challenge is to become a more missionary Church – and this at a time when a certain institutional diminishment can tempt us to circle the wagons in some supposedly self-protective manoeuvre.”
The cathedral was packed with a congregation including 37 bishops from every state and territory of Australia, two bishops from New Zealand – Bishop Denis Browne of Hamilton and Bishop Charles Drennan of Palmerston North – and one from Sri Lanka Bishop Cletus Perrera of Ratnapura.
Archbishop Emeritus John Bathersby, who retired late last year as Archbishop of Brisbane was there to offer words of welcome to his successor.
Archbishop Coleridge’s family and friends joined the celebration.
Archbishop Coleridge said all the Church’s structures, strategies and services “must be geared to this new surge of Gospel energy, this new evangelisation, which can come only from a new and deeper encounter with the Lord crucified and risen”.
“The Church is wounded; the Church is always wounded in one way or another, though never unto death,” he said.
“The wounds of this time will be healed only if we come to Jesus, through whom flows the power that can turn all our wounds to fountains, all our weakness to strength.
“Only then will we be equipped, indeed empowered, for the mission, the new evangelisation, to which not just the Popes but the Holy Spirit is now summoning the whole Church.
“We need to be born anew from the wounded side of Christ.”
Full Story Catholic Leader