‘Friend of the diaconate’ named auxiliary bishop

This is pretty great news, in an email from the International Diaconate Center: 

During the Jubilee celebrations of the International Diaconate Centre, Dr. Algirdas Jurevičius – at the time Vicar General of the smallest diocese in Lithuania – spoke about the diaconate in a missionary Church of the future. The diaconate, he said, is characterized by dynamics and flexibility. Jurevičius sees the great opportunity of this ministry in “diaconal action and reaching out to people and their needs”. A missionary Church needs diakonia and she needs deacons. “When I speak about that, I do not refer merely to deacons as ministers of the Church. I am thinking about a community committed to diakonia, which is inspired and animated by the deacons into becoming a missionary community.”

In 2004 he received his doctorate from the Sankt Georgen Graduate School of Philosophy and Theology in Frankfurt/Main for a thesis entitled “On the Theology of the Diaconate. The Permanent Diaconate in the Quest for Its Own Profile”.

Pope Francis now named him Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Kaunas. In his episcopal coat of arms, he chose to have a deacon’s stole over the cross and his episcopal motto is: “Servite Domino in laetitia”.

Check out his coat of arms, below. Has a bishop ever chosen a deacon cross/stole for his emblem?

Congratulations! Ad multos annos!