An Irish priest has been appointed as the new Apostolic Nuncio to Burkina Faso and will serve as the official papal representative in that country.
Mgr Michael Crotty will also be ordained to the episcopate, as the Pope named him the new Archbishop for the titular see of Lindisfarne. The date of his consecration has not yet been released.
In a statement, Mgr Crotty said he was “deeply honoured and profoundly humbled” by the Pope's decision, and that he accepted his new role “in a spirit of obedience and gratitude”.
Ordained in 1994, the 50 year old priest is a graduate of Maynooth and the Gregorian Pontifical University, where he received a Doctorate in Eccelesiastical History in 2001. The native of County Cork is an experienced Vatican diplomat, having served in the nunciatures of Canada, Iraq, Spain and Kenya over the past two decades. He was given the rank of monsignor by Pope Benedict XVI in 2005.
Mgr Crotty paid tribute to his parents, his family, his teachers, his brother priests, and the faith community of his home parish, Mitchelstown, who “taught the Catholic faith not only by word, but also by witness and example”. He singled out William Crean, Bishop of Cloyne since 2013, for especial praise, thanking him for the “paternal care and concern that he has shown” towards the priests of his Diocese. In an official statement Bishop Crean said the appointment was “a great honour” for the diocese.
The new nuncio will be faced with serious problems in Burkina Faso, where the Catholic community is afflicted by poverty and threatened by persecution. Senior Bishops have warned that Christianity, the faith of a quarter of the population in the west African nation, may face elimination due to the rise of Islamic extremism. In 2019, more than 60 Christians have been murdered in the country of 20.3 million people, in what the charity Open Doors has termed “the greatest rise in persecution of Christians anywhere in the world”.
The bishopric of Lindisfarne originally existed from the seventh to the tenth century, before being moved to Durham and undergoing a corresponding change of name in 995 AD. In 1970 St Paul VI revived Lindisfarne as a ‘titular see’, without functional existence but otherwise equal in rank to their non-titular equivalents. Prior to Archbishop Crotty only auxiliary bishops of Westminister had occupied his titular archdiocese.
Archbishop Crotty referenced the Irish missionary tradition that created Lindisfarne in his statement, requesting the intercession in particular of Saint Aidan, founder of Lindisfarne, and Saint Columba, founder of Iona, the monastery from which Aidan was raised to the episcopacy.
Loading ...
