In the Baltimore of the 1960s, my canny pastor devised a neat scheme for getting “Father Visitor” (as the confessional doors read) to fill in during the summer for his vacationing curates: bring over newly-ordained Australians from their studies in Rome.
There were no language issues (save for those of, er, accent); by the standards of student priests fresh from the Urban College of Propaganda Fidei, the young Aussies were recompensed handsomely and got to see something of the United States; it was win-win, all around.
Thus in the summer of 1967 I met Fr. George Pell of Ballarat, who, with the oils of ordination still wet on his forehead, spent several months at my parish before embarking on doctoral studies at Oxford.
In the first place, let me thank so many of you for your expression of prayerful and loving support as I celebrated five years as your bishop, on August 1. St. Alphonsus Ligouri, whom we celebrate on August 1, is the great patron of moral theologians, and I am very devoted to him. He had a strong and unique devotion to Our Lady of Perpetual Help, to whom I’m also very devoted. I hope that all in the diocese will ask the intercession of St. Alphonsus and Our Lady of Perpetual Help, so that we can continue to move forward in union with our Holy Father and in loving obedience to him, to be that faithful local Church whom we are called to be, today and tomorrow.