KANSAS CITY (MO)
National Catholic Reporter
Brian Roewe Soli Salgado | Apr. 21, 2015
KANSAS CITY, MO. Emotions ran high among Catholics in the Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., diocese as word spread that Bishop Robert Finn had resigned Tuesday morning. The reactions ranged from sadness and disappointment among Finn’s supporters to relief among his critics.
Nearly all who spoke to NCR talked of the pain of the last few years, and all expressed a need for the diocese to enter a time of healing.
Fr. Pat Rush, pastor at Visitation Parish, echoed the message of Kansas City, Kan., Archbishop Joseph Naumann, named administrator of the neighboring diocese, in hoping the new phase “will be a time of grace and healing for the diocese.”
“We all know the Vatican can work slowly, and I hope it does not work slowly because I think we have been adrift. And I think we’ll continue to be adrift until such a time as we have a bishop that we can kind of all feel that he has a goal of supporting and strengthening the communion of the church,” Rush told NCR.
Rush was one of about a dozen priests and parishioners — supporters, critics and neutral people — interviewed in September 2014 during an apostolic visitation into Finn’s leadership of the diocese. Those interviews led to a report to the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops.
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