Retired Auxiliary Bishop Agustín Román in front of the Shrine of Our Lady of Charity in Miami, Florida. Photo provided by the Archdiocese of Miami.

I was enjoying a perfectly wonderful evening tonight when a phone call to a priest friend in Miami brought me the news that one of my episcopal idols had been called home to the Father earlier in the evening. Bishop Agustín Román, for thirty-one years the auxiliary bishop of Miami died tonight, reportedly in his car at the very Shrine to Our Lady of Charity, which he erected, staffed, and called home for over forty-six years. Eighty-three years old last night, he was to Miami’s Cuban community their “bishop.” They loved him, they adored him and they will miss him greatly. And already I feel his loss as well.

The Boards of Trustees of two of the three seminaries which our students attend met Thursday at St. John Vianney College Seminary in Miami and on Friday at St. Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary in Boynton Beach. Our collegians are formed and educated at the former as are college graduates who lack the credits in philosophy and need also to spend some time acclimating to the spiritual life, spiritual direction and to prayer prior to beginning theology studies. The College Seminary is owned by the Archdiocese of Miami which assumes both the financial and staffing responsibility, a sizable commitment of money each year and priests. It was my special privilege to have served as the fifth Rector of St. John Vianney from 1979 through 1984 so a part of my heart is invested there. The program as it exists today is far superior to what I superintended in those five years and the current Rector, Father Roberto Garza, is doing a fine job. All the students major in philosophy which puts them in good intellectual stead to take on the study of theology. Both disciplines are somewhat abstract with very practical applications to life and belief nonetheless and the faculty at the college is, I believe, second to none in the United States. The interviews and time I spend with our seminarians always seems to return to the same thematic and that is the college has an excellent, demanding academic program but the professors are dedicated to helping all the students comprehend the subject matter. A Board meeting at the college level, however, is reasonably easy for me to attend as I have neither a financial nor priest personnel “dog in the hunt.” I am very grateful to the past and present Archbishops of Miami for their unfailing support of the program at St. John Vianney which is expensive monetarily and priest-personnel wise. In hard times in both instances, critics always take aim at the college seminary and suggest its demise. Instead it has grown stronger with a larger number of students and an even more capable administration and faculty than in my time, myself included.

The Regional Seminary of St. Vincent de Paul, however, and its Board are another matter. Since all seven Florida dioceses own that seminary and must provide the priest personnel, at each Board meeting we always do at least two important things: set and monitor a budget and expenses and plan for priest faculty members. The cost-per-seminarian at St. Vincent de Paul Seminary hovers around $55,000 per year depending mostly on the size of the enrollment. More seminarians, the less the per capita expense as one would expect. Each diocese pays for the room, board and tuition of its seminarians which currently is set at approximately $30,000 per year. The balance is made up through a yearly subsidy payment charged to each diocese based on its Catholic population. Additionally, the seminary opened in the early ’60′s and is in constant state of repair and replacement so additional monies are sometimes required for that. When the seminary went “regional” in the early ’80′s, the original six bishops who agreed to join ponied up about 7.3 million dollars for an endowment fund and later in the late ’90′s when the one hold-out Florida diocese decided to join, they made a contribution of an additional $700,000 to that same endowment fund. The funds are invested in equity and fixed market funds and are supervised by a very diligent committee of lay women and men from the Diocese of Palm Beach who meet regularly to gauge the success of our investment managers. We were pleased to learn that after experiencing the same significant drop in value as most of the rest of us endured when the housing market and banking pranks of three to four years ago, the endowment fund now sits at a value of 12.7 million dollars. A covenant in the original agreement of the founding bishops of the regional seminary concept was that the corpus could never be invaded to the point that the fund would be less than the approximately 8 million dollars the owning dioceses have contributed. There have been raids on the endowment fund in the past (a loan subsequently repaid to the trust for 1.2 million dollars for roof replacement, for example) and had we left the endowment fund alone since its inception, it would most likely sit somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 million dollars.

But money is one half of the challenge of maintaining a superior seminary for our men. Providing the faculty is the other part. I have always said any bishop will be more willing to write a check than assign away for special service a gifted priest to form and educate our future priests. The Diocese of St. Petersburg currently has given for the last ten years to the seminary one of its greatly gifted priests, Father Michael Muhr, who is a spiritual director to the men and who is loved and admired by faculty, staff and students alike. Additionally, we have two priests currently pursuing graduate studies who will be available to join the faculty in 2012 and 2013. I am deeply committed to giving to the seminary any priest of this diocese who would be an excellent role model for our seminarians as well as a gifted teacher and/or spiritual director. It is probably this diocese’s most important gift or commitment to the vitality of priestly service and ministry here in the years ahead.

So the two seminaries are “treasures we know not” in this state. If any reader has the resources and wishes to make a contribution to the development funds of either place, contact me. In the months ahead, I will try to brush away more of the “sand” which covers the pearls of great price which are St. John Vianney College Seminary and the Regional Seminary of St. Vincent de Paul.

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The Most Rev. John Noonan - Bishop-designate of Orlando

On the day I was ordained a deacon for the Archdiocese of Miami, the final step in my journey to priesthood, as we were preparing to leave St. James Catholic Church in North Miami to drive to St. Clement’s Church in Fort Lauderdale where I would be the first ordination of Miami’s new archbishop, Edward A. McCarthy. one of the senior priests whom I had been living with, Father George Razzutis, was rushed to the local hospital with what appeared to be (and was indeed) a heart attack. From the stretcher on the way from the house to the ambulance, this grand old priest said to me, “It is OK, God today gives us a new priest and takes an old one.” Father Razzutis lived for three more days in the hospital and each day when I would visit him would take my hand and say almost exactly the same phrase. It is a characteristic of our God, He sometimes takes away but then if we wait long enough, we can see His provident hand at work once again as He gives us something unexpected to raise and buoy our spirits. Yesterday was one of those days with the death of our dear Monsignor Scully but I did not have to wait long to witness God’s loving care for his Church at work again.

This morning at noon in Rome (6:00am EDT), it was announced that my brother Miami priest and bishop, John Noonan, was chosen by the Holy Father to become the fifth bishop of Orlando, our neighbor the east, starting in the border counties of Polk, Sumner and Marion. Bishop Noonan was a classmate in the seminary of our Father Michael Muhr and escaped myself as his Rector by several months as he was already in the theology seminary in Boynton Beach in 1979 when I was made Rector of St. John Vianney Seminary. Born in Ireland but with most of his education, certainly in the seminary, in the United States, once ordained he became a priceless, hard-working parish priest. He would later return to St. John Vianney College Seminary as Vice-Rector and Dean of Men as well as Rector. A number of our younger clergy ordained the last twelve years remember him fondly in this capacity. Astute, holy, hard-working, Bishop John Noonan would earn the respect and, I would say, fondness of the priests of Miami during the recent years when he has served as Auxiliary Bishop and touchstone with the priests often in their relationship with their archbishop.

A segment of our diocesan family will remember that last October he came to St. Jude’s Cathedral and ordained nineteen of our permanent deacons, in so doing winning the hearts of all those in the Cathedral that day. Orlando does not yet appreciate how lucky they are in this appointment but it will not take them long. I thank the Lord this morning that a good and dear friend has been chosen to lead the Church adjacent to my own, begun on the same day as my own, now slightly larger than my own. There is a world of difference between being an auxiliary bishop in the Church and an ordinary or bishop-in-charge. Together let us pray between now and his installation on December 16, 2010 for our sister Church in Orlando and for Bishop Noonan. Orlando I hope appreciates that they did not have to wait long when the Lord took their previous bishop and then gave them their new bishop. Vere dignum et justum est (it is truly right and just.)

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Then-Bishop Wenski and then-Archbishop Favalora at Wenski's 10th Anniversary of Ordination as a Bishop. (Florida Catholic)

The Holy See announced at noon Rome time today (600am EDT) that Pope Benedict XVI has accepted the request of Archbishop John Clement Favalora to retire as the third Archbishop of Miami and has appointed as Miami’s fourth archbishop, Bishop Thomas Wenski, formerly a priest of Miami but now serving as bishop of Orlando. This announcement is of special interest to our diocese as many of you will remember that Archbishop Favalora served as third bishop of St. Petersburg and as my immediate predecessor. I was the first priest ordained to the episcopacy by the Archbishop on January 26, 1996 and therefore I am in a way his “oldest son.” In his fifteen and a half years as Archbishop of Miami, he has ordained as bishops Bishop Victor Galeone of St. Augustine, Bishop Wenski of Orlando, Bishop Gilberto Fernandez, Bishop Felipe de Jesus Estevez, and Bishop John Noonan as assistant bishops in Miami and has installed Bishop John H. Ricard as Bishop of Pensacola-Tallahassee, Bishop J. Keith Symons as Bishop of Palm Beach, Bishop Norbert Dorsey as third bishop of Orlando, Bishop Anthony J. O’Connell of Palm Beach, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Palm Beach, Bishop Gerald Barbarito of Palm Beach, Bishop Wenski of Orlando and Bishop Frank DeWane of Venice. So one can easily see his presence as metropolitan archbishop of Miami just in episcopal ordinations and installations and is in addition to daily managing a large archdiocese.

So what does this change imply for our local Church and for myself? The Church asks archbishops to “mentor” the other bishops of his province, to monitor if necessary important things occurring in the other dioceses, and to call the bishops of the province together from time to time to discuss candidates for the episcopal office. In our case, the Archbishop of Miami is automatically the President of the Florida Catholic Conference so he convenes us as bishops four times a year to conduct the affairs of the FCC, and he is Chancellor of our theologate in Boynton Beach where most of our future priests and bishops are trained, and there we meet twice a year. For myself personally this is a bittersweet moment. I am happy for Archbishop Favalora that after many years of active ministry, as priest and bishop, he will soon be freed of the burden of administration and can begin to relax. As our “leader” he had a wonderful ability to help us relax when we were together and to enjoy the company of one another as bishops. He did not like or lead long meetings and he was available when we needed someone to talk to about anything. I will miss those wonderful gifts very much as I suspect will also my brother bishops. The last few years in Miami have been particularly stressful for not only the archbishop but for many others there so I wish him a stress-less and peaceful retirement.

Bishop Wenski knows what he is inheriting. He is a gifted linguist speaking fluent Creole, Spanish, and Polish in addition to his native tongue. It will be the first time when at a minimum a tri-cultural and tri-lingual urban archdiocese will have someone to easily communicate with the people in their native tongues. As I told him in a phone call, now I know who is likely to bury me and I assured him of my prayers and support in his daunting new ministry.

When the Diocese of St. Petersburg was created in 1968, Bishop Charles McLaughlin was appointed our first bishop. On the same day, the Diocese of Orlando was created and  William Donald Borders was named first bishop of Orlando. Amazingly he died yesterday at the age of  96, one day prior to his successor three times removed  being named to Miami. He himself retired as Arcbishop of Baltimore many years ago. Also yesterday (Monday) the mother of Bishop Barbarito of Palm Beach went home to the Lord after a long life and lots of love from her priest/bishop son. May we remember both of these people in our prayers.

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