Bishop Kinney Outlines Challenges of Long Career

By Frank Lee
St. Cloud Times
September 25, 2012

http://www.sctimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2012309250032&adjusted=1&nclick_check=1

St. Cloud Bishop John F. Kinney talked about the challenges facing his diocese, his career, his retirement plans and victims of sexual abuse during a Rotary of St. Cloud luncheon today .

The 75-year-old spiritual leader of the Catholic diocese is the longest-serving bishop in the U.S. The ninth bishop of the St. Cloud diocese was a guest speaker at Le St-Germain Suite Hotel.

"It has been a joy for me to be the bishop, here. … This is a wonderful diocese — great priests, great deacons and lay ministers in the church — wonderful people of God," Kinney said.

Kinney was first ordained an auxiliary bishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis in 1977, and served as bishop of Bismarck, N.D., from 1982 to 1995 before his appointment to St. Cloud.

"I have had the pure pleasure of leading Catholic Charities of the Diocese of St. Cloud during all of his time here in this diocese, and I have to say I've enjoyed his support and his confidence in the work that we do," said Steve Bresnahan, executive director of Catholic Charities.

St. Cloud diocese

The St. Cloud diocese encompasses 12,251 square miles in more than a dozen Central Minnesota counties, which includes 132 parishes with a combined Catholic population of 140,000.

"The challenges that we face is, of course, a shortage of priests. But there is an additional challenge and that is how best to help form lay Catholic people to serve in ministry in the church in several different capacities," Kinney said.

"The growing multicultural work that the church is involved in is a challenge for us. One of the difficulties that we face is having our priests able to celebrate liturgies in Spanish for the many people who are coming to live within our midst."

Kinney also talked about the diminishing number of children attending Catholic schools.

"It's a real challenge for us … because the availability of children in society, as well as in the Catholic Church, is shrinking, so we have several Catholic schools that are becoming very close to too small to keep open," he said.

Kinney appeared in good humor and good spirits on Tuesday despite the use of a cane. However, he eventually brought up the sex scandal that has rocked the Catholic Church in recent years.

"The most difficult committee that I was asked to chair were the first years of the committee on the sexual abuse of minors in the Catholic Church, and I chaired that committee for eight years beginning in the 1990s," said Kinney, who has sat down with the victims.

"I would want to say that our Safe Environment Program here in the Diocese of St. Cloud is one of the best in the United States … and we are a leader internationally as far as how to address the question of the care and protection of young people in our society."

Future plans

In light of the proposed state constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between one man and one woman, Minnesota's bishops are urging churchgoers to donate money for television ads in support of the amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

"Many people have members of their own family who are in suffering, so we want to be very compassionate on that, but we also have strong feelings about what marriage is," Kinney said after the luncheon.

Kinney is at the age which bishops are required by church law to submit their resignation to the pope. He submitted his letter of resignation on June 11.

"I got a letter back saying that my retirement had been accepted but stay in place until the new bishop is named … so we're all kind of in a waiting game and a praying game for who the next bishop would be," Kinney said of the replacement process, which can take up to a year.

Kinney told the Rotary Club of St. Cloud that his future plans include relocating from the Children's Home where he now lives to the priest retirement home in Sauk Rapids.

"I plan to do some writing. I have 30 years of personal journals that I need to go through, and I would like to pull that together in some way into a book about being a bishop," he said.

Kinney served for six years on the board of directors of Catholic Relief Services, the international arm of the Catholic Church in the United States.

"This has been my life. It has been a great ride," he said. "I love being a priest, and I love being a bishop of the church. My challenge once the new bishop is in place, here, is for me to learn how to let go."