Pope names replacement for fired U.S. Bishop Joseph Strickland

The Pope today named a replacement for the American bishop he controversially fired more than a year ago.

Francis has appointed Auxiliary Bishop John Kelly of Dallas to succeed Bishop Joseph Strickland as the Bishop of Tyler, Texas.

Bishop Strickland, 66, was removed from office by the Pontiff in November last year and Bishop Joe Vásquez of Austin given the role of administrator until a replacement was found.

Although the reasons for the 2023 apostolic visitation that led to Bishop Strickland’s dismissal were not made public, it is widely believed they related to Strickland’s public opposition to Pope Francis and his pastoral decisions.

Through his social media accounts, as well as a radio programme on Virgin Most Powerful Radio and his website – bishopstrickland.com – Strickland repeatedly criticised the Synod of Bishops on Synodality, as well as various other aspects of Francis’s pontificate.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, he frequently condemned the use of vaccines derived from aborted foetuses as unethical in spite the Vatican enthusiastically encouraging their use among Catholics.

In an interview with LifeSiteNews, Bishop Strickland said soon after his sacking that he could not understand why he was being deprived of his see but speculated that he was the victim of enemies of the faith within the Church.

He said: “I really can’t look to any reason except I’ve threatened some of the powers that be with the truth of the Gospel.”

“The only answer I have to that is because forces in the Church right now don’t want the truth of the Gospel,” he continued.

“They want it changed. They want it ignored. They want to be rid of the truth that is gloriously not going to go away. The truth that is Jesus Christ, His mystical body, which is the Church, all the wonders that the martyrs died for and the saints lived for through almost 2000 years since Christ died and rose.”

The bishop said that if such internal enemies wanted to stop Catholics from learning the truth of the Gospel, then “I’m a problem” and they therefore agitated for the “removal of a bishop for standing with the Gospel”.

Bishop Strickland did not directly accuse Pope Francis of undermining Church teaching but said, however, that “many forces are working at him and influencing him to make these kinds of decisions”.

He said: “There are people in the Church, rather than glorying in the truth of Christ, they want to delete significant portions of Sacred Scripture and say, ‘Oh, we got that wrong,’ or ‘we’re just going to ignore it.’”

Bishop Strickland said, however, that “the saints, through 2,000 years, didn’t get it wrong”.

“The Scriptures tell us that Jesus Christ is the face of truth,” Bishop Strickland said. “He doesn’t morph into a different being than He was when He died on the cross and rose for us. He is the same Lord; He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and those who want to change that, for a day, in terms of human history, we have to live through this day, but it’s a moment that will pass, and the truth will prevail.”

He continued: “We know we’re living through a time of questions and confusions of faith, and many people walking away, many Catholics saying, ‘Oh, they don’t really believe these things anymore’.

Bishop Strickland said his diocese was financially strong at the time of the visitation and that there were 21 seminarians training to be priests from a population of just 120,000 Catholics.

(CNS Photo)

The post Pope names replacement for fired U.S. Bishop Joseph Strickland first appeared on Catholic Herald.

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