Bishop Stephen Lowe ordained in packed Hamilton cathedral

After Bishop Stephen Lowe was ordained as the third Bishop of Hamilton on February 13, he told the people that God does amazing things using simple things.

The use of water in Baptism and bread and wine in Communion are examples of this, Bishop Lowe said.

“With sinful and weak men, [the Lord’s] priesthood lives in the Church until the consummation of time,” he added.

Bishop Lowe said it had been truly “a humbling three months since I was informed Pope Francis had appointed me bishop of Hamilton”.

“It has been a profound journey that many of you have part of,” he told the congregation of more than 1000 which packed the Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin Mary and overflowed onto its steps.

The second bishop of Hamilton, Bishop Denis Browne, was the principal consecrator.

Bishops Barry Jones of Christchurch and Charles Drennan of Palmerston North were the other official consecrating bishops.

Bishop Lowe said he wished Bishop Browne a happy retirement, but asked him to continue doing pastoral work among God’s people.

“I look forward to you being for me a spiritual father, a man of wisdom, and great pastoral sense,” Bishop Lowe said.

The new bishop’s motto is “The Lord is my Shepherd”.

In his homily, Bishop Browne referred to a reflection Pope Francis gave a year ago on the various qualities needed in a bishop.

We need men who are “guardians of doctrine, not to measure how far away the world lives from the truth it contains, but in order to attract the world, to enchant it by the beauty of love, to seduce it with the offer of freedom which is given by the Gospel”, Bishop Browne quoted from Francis.

Bishop Browne also noted the blood relationship between Bishop Lowe and Blessed Abbott Columba Marmion, OSB, an Irish spiritual writer who died in 1923.

At the ordination, the Apostolic Nuncio to New Zealand, Archbishop Martin Krebs, read out the mandate from the Holy See, in the name of Pope Francis.

On February 12, Bishop Lowe was welcomed in a powhiri at Hui Te Rangiora Marae in Hamilton.

Bishop Jones and a representative from Hokitika, Bishop Lowe’s home town, took him from the Christchurch visitors and presented him to the people of Hamilton diocese.

Sources

Additional reading

News category: New Zealand, Top Story.

Tags: , , , , ,