Catholic Diocese of Spokane, Washington

From the

Official News Magazine of the Diocese of Spokane

(From the Sept. 29, 2005 edition of the Inland Register)

Bishop Skylstad emphasizes a point during his talk at a recent breakfast gathering in the meeting hall of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Lourdes, Spokane. (IR photo)

For several years, Bishop William Skylstad has hosted a monthly Breakfast with the Bishop, in Spokane.

The breakfasts offer an informal setting for him to discuss current issues facing the Church and aspects of his ministry as Bishop of Spokane.

Last year he hosted breakfasts four times in Walla Walla and Pasco as well.

Mike Doohan, of St. John Vianney Parish, in Spokane Valley, has been attending the Bishop’s Breakfast for several years. “It’s very informative, but what you really get out of it is a closeness to what’s really going on in our diocese and in the church,” Doohan said.

At 7 a.m. on Thursday, Sept. 8, some 60 men and women gathered in the basement social hall of Spokane’s Cathedral of Our Lady of Lourdes for a one-hour continental breakfast and conversation with the bishop. He opened with a prayer, then commented that this was the first time the Bishop’s Breakfast was being held in the cathedral facility – it had outgrown its home for several years in the Catholic Pastoral Center’s first-floor meeting room. Beginning with this Bishop’s Breakfast on Sept. 8, sponsorship of the monthly event has been assumed by the Serra Club.

Bishop Skylstad next remarked briefly on the current status of the diocese’s Chapter 11 proceedings and the recent court decision concerning the property of the estate issue.

The bishop and Father Steve Dublinski, the diocese’s Vicar General and rector of the cathedral, responded to a few questions from the group. The bishop then commented on the massive efforts of national and regional Catholic Charities organizations to provide relief efforts for the survivors of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana and Mississippi.

“The church has really done some mighty works, in terms of resettling people displaced by the floods,” the bishop said. “We will be accepting some survivors here in Spokane. This is a massive effort, and it’s one for us, as church, given our network of social services and our network of parishes, that we can really respond to in a very big way.”

The bishop then turned to the main topic of the morning: his recent visit to Eastern Europe, including the main reason for his visit, which was to attend, as president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany.

“The World Youth Day experience in Cologne was, I think, a great success. It was not without its logistical problems – both at the beginning, in getting food to the kids, and at the end, moving hundreds of thousands of people over two or three roads to get to the site. But in any case, it was a remarkable experience,” said Bishop Skylstad.

“This is the most recent in a series of six World Youth Days that have occurred, and it’s interesting that the countries are beginning to eagerly seek out World Youth Days, for what it does as far as evangelization is concerned,” he said. “In the World Youth Day experience three years ago in Toronto, the press was initially very negative and rather cynical: ‘Why would an old feeble pope come to a country like Canada to be with several hundred thousand kids?’ And I have to tell that at the end of that week, Monday morning after the big Mass, the comments from the press were extremely positive. The Canadian bishops have felt that this coming together with kids from all over the world, especially with their own youth in Canada, is a once-in-a-lifetime experience that can be really powerful.”

During his trip, he also traveled to Russia and Poland. “The reason for the visit to those two areas is that we have at the bishops’ conference, in Washington, D.C., an office for aid to the church in Eastern Europe. We dispense monies to churches in Eastern Europe for particular projects. It might be for the rebuilding of churches, it might be for cate-chetical programs, or whatever. In the last 12 years about $80 million has been collected from the church here in the U.S. that has been dispensed to projects” there, he said. “Our trips to Russia and to Poland were to visit those projects and see what the needs are, and to offer affirmation and support, especially to the church in Russia.”

The relationship between the Catholic and Orthodox churches in Russia has been tense, he said. Pope John Paul II was blocked from making a pastoral visit to Russia. Other Vatican officials, such as Cardinal Walter Kasper, have traveled “several times to Russia, and to visit the Patriarch.”

Bishop Skylstad explained that there are some 1.5 million Catholics in Russia, spread out over about nine or 10 time zones. “That’s a huge country,” he said.

Finally, the bishop commented on his visit to Poland, including Auschwitz and Birkenau, two World War II Nazi concentration camps. “We visited both camps, and it really was a very profoundly sobering experience in both cases,” he said. “At the same time, there were moments of light, such as visiting the starvation cell in Auschwitz where St. Maximilian Kolbe died.”

Maggie Albo, from St. Mary Parish in Spokane Valley, has been attending the Bishop’s Breakfasts “off and on for a couple of years.” She explained that she attends because she likes to “hear the bishop speak in a personal way. You hardly ever get access to the bishop, and when you can be in a smaller group where you can have personal access and can ask questions, that’s what I like.”

The next Bishop’s Breakfast will be in the basement social hall of Our Lady of Lourdes Cathedral at 7 a.m., Thursday, Oct. 6. Bishop Skylstad will be out of town on that date, so the breakfast will be hosted by Rob McCann, Diocesan Director of Catholic Charities. The bishop will return for the following Bishop’s Breakfast on Thursday, Nov. 10.

The breakfasts are free and open to the public.