Saskatoon Catholics welcome new bishop
After spending slightly more than a year without a leader, Saskatoon’s Roman Catholic Diocese will officially welcome its new bishop on Thursday.
Appointed to the position by Pope Francis, Bishop Mark Hagemoen (pronounced HAG-i-mon) will take over the top job after former Bishop Donald Bolen was named Archbishop of Regina.
Hagemoen previously served as bishop of the Mackenzie-Fort Smith diocese — geographically one of the largest in the world, stretching more than 1.5 million square kilometres across the Northwest Territories, northern Saskatchewan and western Nunavut.
He will be officially installed as the head of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Saskatoon Thursday at 7 p.m. in a celebration attended by numerous Catholic bishops and priests, members of Saskatoon’s Indigenous community and more than 1,000 Catholics from across the diocese.
Hagemoen says he is excited to explore a few aspects of the diocese more closely, including the Catholic education system, family support systems, and how different Catholic cultures interact — especially how Indigenous and non-Indigenous Catholics relate to each other through shared common threads of their faith.
He said he is hopeful that in the future Pope Francis will be able to come to Saskatchewan to issue an apology to residential school survivors. When Bishops from Western Canada met with the Pope in March, they were told a visit to Canada was not in the cards for 2017 but would be a possibility in 2018 or 2019.
“The Holy Father Pope Francis is very sensitive and responsive to the needs of people, especially people who have been hurt or oppressed or victimized in any way, so he may have some surprises ... so I look forward to that,” Hagemoen said.
He also wants to learn more about the approximately 80,000 parishioners in the diocese — which stretches across nearly 45,000 square kilometres from Macklin to Leader — before he sets any goals for himself or the diocese, he said.
“I’ve learned from my ministry with the Dene, Metis and Inuit people in the North it’s important as a newcomer not to come in with a goal or agenda,” he said.
“That will come ... it will be really important to invest myself in listening, hearing and meeting the people, so that’s what I want to do — I want to put a lot of miles on my Ford Ranger and move around to the various communities to visit, hear and experience.”