Vacant Sees

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Spirithound

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I was just as Catholic Hierarchy, looking at the vacant sees (my Bishop, James Wingle recently retired, please pray for him), and I noticed that several sees have been vacant for well over 50 years ( catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bvacant.html ) !

One of the longest-vacant, the Diocese of Crete, is currently administrated by Bishop Papamanolis who is also the Ordinary of two other dioceses.

The questions: When does a diocese get suppressed? What may be the advantage of keeping a diocese that has 2 priests under an administrator for 70 years? Why are there so many vacant sees when many archdioceses (and dioceses too) have one or more auxiliary Bishops? Toronto just got 2 new auxiliary Bishops, and Yarmouth is still vacant after 8 years.

I hope I’m not coming off disrespectful, I’m just looking for insight.
 
Sometimes, that website isn’t updated as it should, so it may be incorrect.
 
My guess is that for some of those is that they are in Greece and other Eastern Catholic areas, and that most of the people there presumably are affiliated with those churches.

Its possible that the Church is trying to turn those over to the Rite that they would normally belong to
 
Spirithound said:
Also, how long might a see typically remain vacant?
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At the moment, its usually running less than a year on average.

In Canada there are currently only two vacant: Yarmouth and Saint Catharines. There is also one diocese (Saint-Jean-Longueuil) with an ordinary past the normal retirement age.

Yarmouth is a special case. I would not be surprized if it was merged into another diocese.

The other two are likely to have a new bishop later this year.
 
Spirithound said:
I was just as Catholic Hierarchy, looking at the vacant sees (my Bishop, James Wingle recently retired, please pray for him), and I noticed that several sees have been vacant for well over 50 years ( catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bvacant.html ) !

One of the longest-vacant, the Diocese of Crete, is currently administrated by Bishop Papamanolis who is also the Ordinary of two other dioceses.

The questions: When does a diocese get suppressed? What may be the advantage of keeping a diocese that has 2 priests under an administrator for 70 years? Why are there so many vacant sees when many archdioceses (and dioceses too) have one or more auxiliary Bishops? Toronto just got 2 new auxiliary Bishops, and Yarmouth is still vacant after 8 years.

I hope I’m not coming off disrespectful, I’m just looking for insight.
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In particular to the several vacant sees in Greece, one has to keep in mind that their very existence as Latin Rite sees dates from the time of the Crusades when a number of Crusaders stayed in the eastern Mediterranean, particularly in the Greek Isles. Plus, if you look at the population counts, I think you’ll find a total of under 10,000 faithful for all of them put together.
 
davidc2 said:
I typically post updates within an hour of the official announcement.
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Oh, but you couldn’t possibly have done that for Crete 😉
Anyways, according to that diocese’s website, your information is correct. Thank you for your work on a very informative site 😃
 
Spirithound said:
Oh, but you couldn’t possibly have done that for Crete 😉
Anyways, according to that diocese’s website, your information is correct. Thank you for your work on a very informative site 😃
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In addition to the Greek dioceses, it appears that although Yarmouth doesn’t have a bishop, one of its neighboring diocese (I don’t recall which) has an auxillary bishop who has residence in Yarmouth, which probably gives additional credence to the poster above who said it may be merged back into another diocese
 
Instead of questioning the decisions of others, why don’t you pray for more Vocations.
 
JerrySeibert said:
Instead of questioning the decisions of others, why don’t you pray for more Vocations.
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No reason it has to be either one or the other. If that were the case, all of us, including you, could be criticized for participating on this message board instead of praying.

Since inquiry is the purpose of this particular forum, criticism of the OP for inquiring is unwarranted.
 
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