Mgr Marcus Stock was today ordained and installed as the new Bishop of Leeds.
Bishop Stock, former General Secretary of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, assumes governance of the northern diocese that includes 82 parishes and a weekly Mass attendance of around 30,000.
Giving the homily at the Mass, the Archbishop of Liverpool, Malcolm McMahon, warned that being a bishop can be “dangerous, as it can go to your head”.
But he stressed that in Bishop Stock, the diocese of Leeds had a “good man and holy priest” who would be able to guide it through “rough waters”.
In recent years the diocese has faced financial pressures which have led it to cut its central costs by £800,000 and put a freeze on parish building projects.
Mgr Stock, 53, who was an Evangelical Anglican before being received into the Catholic Church, is renowned as an able administrator who before his role at the bishops’ conference was in charge of education in the Archdiocese of Birmingham.
His ordination and installation took place at St Anne’s Cathedral, Leeds, and was attended by Cardinals Vincent Nichols and Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, and the Lord Mayor of Leeds, David Congreve.
Leeds has been without a bishop for two-and-a-half years following Archbishop Arthur Roche’s appointment to the Vatican as secretary to the Congregation for Divine Worship.
The diocese has 99 Catholic schools and colleges and has recently been coping with the tragic murder of Ann Maguire that took place while she was teaching a lesson at Corpus Christi Catholic College, Leeds.
The bishop will celebrate the 11am Mass at St Anne’s Cathedral in Leeds on Sunday.
Photo: Diocese of Leeds
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