English diocese sees bishop’s installation halted — again
Bishop Philip Moger was due to be installed Nov. 9.
The installation of a new Bishop of Plymouth, England, has been delayed for the second time in nine months.
Bishop Philip Moger, currently an auxiliary bishop of Southwark archdiocese, was due to be installed as the 10th bishop of Plymouth Nov. 9. But he announced Nov. 6 that the ceremony would be delayed due to concerns of a “personal nature.”
The bishop gave no details of the reason for his delay, prompting questions and speculation among local Catholics. The bishop did, however, reference the need for “due process” to be observed, raising the prospect that the bishop could be the subject of a canonical investigation.
The delay comes just 258 days after another installation ceremony at Plymouth’s Cathedral Church of St. Mary and St. Boniface was canceled.
Canon Christopher Whitehead, a priest of the Diocese of Clifton, was due to be ordained and installed as the 10th bishop of Plymouth Feb. 22.
But the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales announced Feb. 1 that the ceremony would not take place amid a canonical process.
On March 22, the Diocese of Clifton said that a preliminary investigation had determined that “no canonical action was warranted.”
Whitehead resumed his duties as pastor of St. John the Evangelist in Bath, meaning that the see of Plymouth remained vacant.
The see, which serves around 70,000 Catholics in the southwest of England, has not had an active bishop since June 2022, when Bishop Mark O’Toole, who had led the Plymouth diocese since 2014, was installed as the Archdiocese of Cardiff, Wales.
On Sept. 13, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis had appointed a new Bishop of Plymouth: the 69-year-old Moger, who oversaw the liturgies during Pope Benedict XVI’s 2010 U.K. visit and was previously rector of National Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham.
In his Nov. 6 statement, Moger said: “In the very last few days, concerns have been raised of a personal nature to which I must attend immediately. This will take a little time.”
“I have therefore agreed with all directly concerned to delay my installation as the new Bishop of Plymouth until these processes have been completed.”
“I sincerely regret this delay and offer my apologies to all who are disappointed and inconvenienced. However it is important that everything is properly in place and due process observed.”
If this is the palaver for Plymouth I hate to think how the search for the next Archbishop of Westminster is going.
Seeing that the Plymouth diocese has been fading away for decades and total Mass attendance is now perhaps 7,000, this might have been a good time to merge it with another moribund diocese. But, seeing that two Welsh dioceses have recently merged, our hierarchy are not going to be eager to advertise their extinction.
After the embarrassing fiasco of cancelling the February installation, you might have hoped that the new candidate's life had been examined in minute detail before this 9th November installation was announced.