Bridgeport Bishop Caggiano returns his residence to the seminary

From NCR: 

As part of a series of diocesan changes, the bishop of Bridgeport, Conn., announced Tuesday plans to repurpose his nearly 9,000-square-foot home and possibly relocate his diocesan offices but said he will leave solutions to larger pastoral questions to Fairfield County’s first synod in 33 years.

In a “state of the diocese” address at All Saints Catholic School in Norwalk, Bishop Frank Caggiano discussed current administrative challenges ($32 million in diocesan debt), progresses (the 2014 fiscal year is expected become the first in many years ending without a deficit) and future plans (diocesan reorganization).

“I need you to know all of the facts because we are family and we are all in this together,” he told the audience of more than 500 lay leaders and clergy, 350 of whom are synod delegates.

As for pastoral challenges — such as declines in sacraments and Mass attendance (about 80,000 of 470,000 Fairfield County Catholics attend Mass weekly) and fortifying Catholic schools and enrollment — Caggiano mainly deferred to the diocese’s fourth synod to find solutions.

The yearlong strategic planning process opens Sept. 19 and will focus on four themes: empower the young church; build up communities of faith; foster evangelical outreach; and promote works of charity and justice.

In order to assist the synod, Caggiano likened the work before the diocese in the next year, ensuring its processes and procedures reflect best practices, to checking the foundation of the house before beginning to build upon it.

“Leadership needs to lead by example before others can follow. And therefore before any other institution is going to undergo change, I think the diocese has to go first,” he said.

The metaphor met reality as Caggiano announced he will return his current residence to its original purpose as St. John Fisher Seminary.

Bishops’ residences have come under scrutiny in the past year, particularly in Newark, N.J., and Atlanta, as some Catholics have come to expect their local shepherds to mirror Pope Francis by choosing more modest living quarters.

Repurposing his 8,900-square-foot Trumbull home has been a priority since Caggiano arrived in the diocese in September 2013. Two weeks after his installation, he received a letter from a man asking, “How do you justify living in a house as big as you do?”

“And I wrote back to him,” Caggiano told NCR in April, “and I said to him, ‘I’m brand new. I need to discern an appropriate use of this house.’ Because I can clearly say that for me to have it as my residence the way it is makes me very uncomfortable.”

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