From Our Sunday Visitor:
Siblings, brother priests, and now brother bishops
Bishop-elect Stephen Parkes of Savannah and Bishop Gregory Parkes of St. Petersburg. CNS photos
When Bishop-elect Stephen Parkes becomes the 15th bishop of the Diocese of Savannah, Georgia, on Sept. 23, he will become a brother bishop to his sibling, Bishop Gregory L. Parkes of the Diocese of St. Petersburg, Florida. They will be one of only 11 pairs of sibling-bishops in the history of the Church in the United States. For the Parkes brothers, it is especially poignant, as they are the only two surviving members of their immediate family.
The 55-year old Bishop-elect Stephen Parkes has served the Diocese of Orlando, Florida, for 22 years, the last nine as pastor of Annunciation Parish in Altamonte Springs. The announcement of his appointment as bishop was made July 8 in Washington, D.C., by Archbishop Christophe Pierre, the Vatican nuncio to the United States. The bishop-elect had only learned of it himself on July 2. He was making breakfast following his weekly 31-mile morning bike ride when the apostolic nuncio called to tell him that Pope Francis had selected him as a bishop.
4 comments:
Why the brother dynasty’s? It’s becoming very common.
Brother bishops are extremely uncommon.
There are appx 440 bishops in the United States, about 270 active and 170 retired.
At present I can recall only the Parkes brothers as brothers who are bishops. There may be others - anyone?
I don't know how common it is, not very I think but the odd thing is that this is the second bishop we are getting in my lifetime who has a brother a bishop, the first was our very own diocesan priest named our bishop, Bishop J. Kevin Boland, whose brother was a bishop first, Bishop Raymond Boland now deceased. Both of them are Irish natives.
At Bishop Raymond Boland's ordination and installation as Bishop of Birmingham, I was surprised to the Cardinal Timothy Manning (Los Angeles) in attendance. (It's a long way from LA to D.C., the diocese where Ray Boalnd had served as priest and vicar general.) I wondered what the connection might be.
I asked then Fr. Kevin Boland who told me that Manning was there because he, Manning, was the last Irish born bishop to be ordained in the United States (1946) until Ray Boland's ordination in 1988. Pretty cool gesture there.
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