Bishop Nickless attends conference, pilgrimage in Rome

By RENEE WEBB, Globe editor
October 5, 2004

Whenever someone gets a new job it's fairly common for them to go through some training. The same can be said of bishops.

Bishop R. Walker Nickless was one of 132 prelates that participated in a Pilgrimage to the Tomb of Saint Peter and Conference for New Bishops held Sept. 17-25 in Rome.

"They kept us very busy with talks - three hours in the morning and three hours in the evening," noted the bishop. After 7:30 a.m. Mass and morning prayer they would have two talks, have an afternoon break and come together for two more talks in the late afternoon before 8 p.m. dinner.

Cardinals and bishops who head up the various congregations at the Vatican presented most of the talks. The topics of their presentations focused on a wide array of issues that would help them in their roles as bishops.

"One of the things that impressed me was that the church took so much care to help us as new bishops become familiar with the issues that we are going to have to deal with," said Bishop Nickless. "They really wanted to help us be good leaders and fulfill our role as sanctifier, spiritual leader and shepherd of the diocese."

The first speaker was Cardinal William J. Levada, who heads up the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. His topic was the bishop as teacher of the faith.

Bishop Nickless said Cardinal Attilio Nicora gave one of the talks that he found to be enlightening. It addressed the goods of the church and reasons why the church needs money.

"He took us back to the beginning of Scripture. Even from the beginning there was a treasurer among the 12 apostles so money was obviously a part of the foundation of the church. The women who followed Jesus and attuned to his needs were basically supportive of the apostles and the Lord with their financial resources so the roots of the church and its necessity for money go way back to the time of Jesus," he explained.

The speaker told them that there were four main reasons why the bishops had to oversee the money of the diocese. The first is to have beautiful churches and vessels for divine worship; the second reason is for care of the poor; the third reason is for evangelization - to spend money on proclaiming the Gospel and the fourth is for the support of the clergy.

The investment in appropriate worship space and the care of priests are expenses that can be considered limited. Once you have made the original investment in those two focus areas, the costs do not necessarily continue to rise.

"The other two reasons are unlimited. We can never spend enough money for the poor who will always need our assistance and we can never spend enough money on evangelization and getting the message of the gospel of Christ proclaimed. I had never looked at financial resources in that way before. It was a very enlightening." said the bishop.

Bishop Nickless also found a talk on the liturgy by Cardinal Francis Arinze to be very interesting. The cardinal told the bishops that they were the chief liturgists in their diocese.

"It is the bishop's job to make sure that things are done well in terms of the celebration of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist," said the bishop.

Cardinal Arinze acknowledged that there is sometimes difficulty in realizing that no one has the right to change the liturgy. The bishop, in his role as sanctifier, must be the guardian of the liturgy.

"We had a wonderful session on priests with problems and how the bishop has the difficult role of being priest, father and friend," said Bishop Nickless. "It's easy for us as priests to be friends with our fellow priests and to identify with that - to be a brother- but once we become a bishop we have an extra role as father and that's the hard part because that sometimes involves correction. That is difficult at times."

Msgr. Charles Scicluna presented the talk on the bishop and priests with problems, addressing concerns such as child abuse, alcoholism and dispensation from priestly vows.

Numerous other topics were addressed in the presentations such as social communication and the importance of using the media for evangelization that must take place. One talk concerning bioethic questions of today discussed cloning and the morning after pill. Other talks addressed the bishop as the promoter of vocations and the caretaker of seminarians, the pastoral governance of the bishop and the bishop as a man of prayer and the spiritual life. Still other talks addressed ecumenism, culture, diocesan tribunals and more.

"They would share with us, each in their own language, the material they wanted to present to us. It was in a huge auditorium and it was simultaneously translated for us. Some were in German, some in Italian, some were in English, some were in Spanish - but all of us had simultaneous translations." The bishops wore headsets for the translations in their own language.

After each talk, there was a short period of question and answer.

"On Thursday we traveled together - three busses to Castel Gandolfo - and had an audience with the pope," he said. "He addressed us and encouraged us. The pope talked to us about the role of bishop as a unifier of his people and that we are called to holiness. The best example of holiness is the example of our lives - to be holy as we witness our faith to our people."

Pope Benedict XVI, who received the prelates in the summer residence, told them that "to live in profound union with Christ will help you attain that balance necessary between interior recollection and the necessary effort required by the many occupations of life, avoiding falling into an exaggerated activism.

"Through prayer, the doors of your heart open to God's plan, which is a plan of love, to which he calls you, uniting you profoundly to Christ with the grace of the episcopate."

Bishop Nickless said that each prelate, one by one, stood in front of the Holy Father.

"I said I was Bishop Nickless of the Diocese of Sioux City and his words to me were 'please give my greetings to your people.' That was a highlight of Thursday," he said.

The pope gave each bishop a pectoral cross as a sign of his fraternal care for the bishops.

"The pope was very concerned about each of us and was very concerned about each diocese and each bishop that was there. That impressed me so much. He looked tired, but he looked very interested in what we were doing and the work that we do," said Bishop Nickless.

"The feeling of fraternity, brotherhood and support on an international basis was just magnificent. To see all of us together praying, to see us together with the pope, to sense the care that these older cardinals took for us young bishops was just a moving experience. It was no more so clearly seen than on Sunday morning when we had Mass at St. Peter's Basilica when all of the bishops concelebrated Mass with Cardinal Re at the Altar of the Chair - the sign of the authority of St. Peter, the first bishop of Rome."

After Mass, the bishops solemnly processed down to the crypt underneath the altar of St. Peter and gave reverence the tomb of St. Peter, the first bishop of Rome, then to the tombs of John Paul II, John Paul I and Paul VI. He found that pilgrimage to the tombs to be a universal connection for all of the bishops to the church and the Holy Father.

Bishop Nickless prayed for the priests, the seminarians and the people of the diocese at the tomb of St. Peter.

On Monday afternoon they broke into language groups. The Americans and Philippines were together. He mentioned that they shared stories of struggles and found that the bishops from Ireland, Philippines, England and Australia had similar concerns - the care for clergy, evangelization of the people and priest shortage.

"We called ourselves the Class of 2006 and we decided that we would support one another and maybe try to meet when the bishops of the United States come together," he said.

The bishop saw the conference as a chance to network and see how other people solve problems.

"It was a wonderful experience of the universal church. So often it is easy for us to be concerned with our own little diocese and our own particular problems, worries and decisions. All around the world, bishops are making the same kind of decisions and have the same issues," he said.

It was affirming for him to know that the church is big enough to embrace everyone. That knowledge helps them focus on that one goal - to get to heaven and be holy men and women.

While in Rome, the bishops stayed at a seminary run by the Legionaires of Christ.

The U.S. bishops had a chance to tour the North American College and Bishop Nickless had the opportunity to visit with Shane Deman, a seminarian from the Diocese of Sioux City, about his seminary formation.

The bishop pointed out that for several years now the Holy Father has asked the asked the head of the Congregation for Bishops, who is presently

Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, to gather together new bishops that were appointed during this year. This conference included all the new bishops of the world except for the countries that come under the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, which come from mostly Third World countries with mission dioceses. The 80 prelates from mission dioceses attended a separate conference.

Bishop Nickless found Cardinal Re to be quite jovial and supportive of the bishops.

"There was a real sense of fraternity, of the profound call that we received to be bishop at a time like this - to know we are not alone, we are all in this together and that we have the help of so many people at the Vatican and the prayers and support of one another," said Bishop Nickless.

The bishop anticipates that his next official visit to the Vatican will be for the Ad Limina visit in 2009. Every five years American bishops go to Rome to report on the state of their diocese. Msgr. Roger Augustine, the former diocesan administrator, made the visit in 2004.