Bishop Vann's Comments for Press Conference

Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange
September 21, 2012

http://www.rcbo.org/images/stories/Bishop_Vann_Press_Comments.pdf

[with pdf]

Dear members of the media present today, and all who are here. I am very grateful for your presence and for your welcome. I especially thank Bishop Brown and Msgr. Heher for their wonderful welcome. Bishop Brown and I have known each other for 31 years. He was a priest on the sabbatical program at the North American College in Rome, and I was a newly ordained priest studying canon law. We were in residence at the Casa Santa Maria of the North American College at the time. And, in the same residence, Msgr. Heher and I were studying together during the same time period. When we were younger (!) priests!! And, Bishop Dominic and I have known each other for several years, and he was my guest in Fort Worth last December when we dedicated the new Church of Vietnamese Martyrs in Arlington, Texas, one of the biggest Vietnamese parishes here in the United States. So it is a blessing for me to be with you all here and see familiar faces.

I have learned over the years to try to place each day, every decision in the presence of the Word of God as it starts, to surround me and guide me, and all of us. Today is the feast day of St. Matthew, Apostle and evangelist. The first reading for today's feast day in the Church's calendar is from St. Paul to the Ephesians when he says "Brothers and Sisters: I, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to live in a manner worthy of the call you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the preserve the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace: one Body and one Spirit, as you were also called to the one hope of your call; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all."

I cannot think of a better section of Sacred Scripture for me, for all of us today, to describe to what we are called as the Body of Christ. One of the many blessings I have learned from the HIspanic people is that the Church called by them as the "Family of God". And, that, I believe with all my heart is who we are: this is what I have learned from my years in Fort Worth, and from what I have learned about all of you so far from Bishop Brown.

You see, when Bishop or a priest is transferred from one parish to another or one Diocese to another, they leave one family behind and gain another. I have so much to be grateful to God for the people of the Diocese of Fort Worth, and north TExas and beyond. I will miss them very much. But, I promise that as we grow together in this exciting and dynamic time of the Diocese of Orange, I will love you and do my best to serve you, with the Lord's help. That is one thing I learned in Fort Worth, and what I will live here.