Pope asks permission for a Bishop

Francis named Bishop Nunzio Galantino the new secretary of the Italian bishops’ conference while allowing him to serve part-time while remaining in his diocese.

John Allen writes in a column in the National Catholic Reporter…. “A typical Francis footnote is that he wrote to the people of Galantino’s diocese to “ask permission” to borrow their bishop, saying, “I know you won’t like that he’s being taken away, and I understand,” and then asked them to “forgive me.” If not unprecedented, it’s certainly rare for a pope to apologize in such a direct way to the people affected by a personnel move.

“Galantino is seen as cut from Francis’ cloth, known in his small southern diocese for living in a small room at the seminary rather than the bishop’s palace, keeping his own calendar and answering his own phone rather than having a secretary, driving himself in a simple car, and insisting on being called “Don Nunzio” rather than “Your Excellency.” When Galantino was made a bishop, he asked people not to give him gifts but to donate to the poor.