New bishop of Antigonish reflects on answering the call
ANTIGONISH, N.S. — The priesthood may have ended up as his calling, but Bishop Wayne Kirkpatrick said, he took a while to answer. The St. Catharine’s, Ont., native, one of five children, grew up in the shadow of the neighbourhood Catholic church. “It was only a few blocks away. I was always very much involved, and I used to go to church on a regular basis,” he said. Most Reverend Wayne Kirkpatrick shared that memory Monday morning, Feb. 3, just a few hours before his installation as the 10th bishop of the Diocese of Antigonish. On one of those occasions helping out at the parish, his priest mentioned he would be retiring one day and would need a replacement. “No, not me,” Kirkpatrick said, repeating the response he gave that day to the suggestion he consider the priesthood. While in high school, he received many letters from religious communities asking if he was interested in pursuing a vocation. Eventually, he decided to attend a vocation awareness weekend. “I met a whole diverse group of people there; not the people who worked at the seminary, but those who came on the weekend,” Kirkpatrick said. He remembered concluding “this place was not for me and I won’t be back here.” Nevertheless, he returned to the same seminary six years later and, after four years there, was ordained in 1984. “At every step of the way, you get people who affirm that — they see that (calling) in you,” Kirkpatrick said, when asked about the decision to follow his religious path.
SHARING GIFTS
Over his career, he served in several parish and diocesan offices before being named as the administrator of the Diocese of St. Catharine’s in 2010. That same year he also became the president of the Canadian Canon Law Society. Kirkpatrick is the co-chairman of the Roman Catholic/ United Church Dialogue and is a member of the National Christian Muslim Liaison Committee. He has also been president of St. Augustine’s Seminary since 2014. Kirkpatrick noted, during his more than 17 years as a pastor, he also worked concurrently in administration. “It was great because I could see the impact of decisions made at the diocesan level and how they had an impact and effect at the parish level,” he said. “When you are working in an office, there are jobs that come up and you end up getting the jobs, so you end up doing a lot of different things, which is good. It gave me a lot of experience,” Kirkpatrick said. During all that, he worked for four bishops. “Each one had their own gifts, so I could appreciate how one did certain things and liked it. Hopefully, I have taken some of those characteristics on,” Kirkpatrick said. As for the “gifts” he hopes to bring to his new role, he pointed to the need “to be kind to people.”
CONTINUE TO HEAL
The Diocese of Antigonish, which includes 99 parishes and missions across northeastern Nova Scotia and Cape Breton, reached a $15-million settlement in 2009 with victims of abuse by priests dating back to 1950. Since then, the financial strain on the diocese has led to the sale of assets, along with the closure of churches, to cover the cost of the deal brokered by then-bishop Raymond Lahey. Only a few weeks after the deal was announced, while returning from a trip to Southeast Asia, Canadian border guards discovered images on Lahey’s laptop, which led to a guilty plea and conviction for possession of child pornography. Lahey, who served eight of a 15-month jail term, was stripped of his clerical status in 2012. “We all need a lot of healing in our lives and so also does the church. You move forward from there and you try to build again,” Kirkpatrick said, when asked about the challenges the Diocese of Antigonish has faced over the past decade or more. When it comes to the message he planned to deliver during his installation, which took place later in the day at St. Ninian Cathedral, Kirkpatrick said, basically, it would be “we are celebrating a new beginning of the local church and I hope that it will be a positive experience.”