Pope Benedict XVI has named Toronto’s auxiliary bishop the new Bishop of Charlottetown.
Bishop Richard Grecco replaces Bishop Vernon Fougere, who is resigning for health reasons.
Grecco was ordained in 1973 and had been with the Archdiocese of Toronto since 2002.
A date for Grecco’s installation as Charlottetown’s 13th bishop is expected to be announced this week. Fougere has been Bishop of Charlottetown since March 1992.
In an interview with The Guardian last month, Fougere said recent ill health would not bring his long run as Bishop of Charlottetown to a close.
“I have health issues,” Fougere told The Guardian in June. “It’s under control with the medication.”
Fougere would not elaborate on what his ailments have been other than to joke that the condition is difficult to pronounce.
Fougere said at the time he planned to continue as Bishop of Charlottetown “for as long as I can.”
The 66-year-old bishop was nine years shy of the mandatory retirement age of 75.
“My preference, if I couldn’t do the work anymore, I would consider submitting my resignation,” he added.
Pope John Paul II appointed Fougere, a native of Petit De Grat, N.S., the 12th Bishop of Charlottetown on Dec. 11, 1991. He was consecrated and installed at St. Dunstan’s Basilica on March 19, 1992.
At 17 years and counting, Fougere was the longest-serving Bishop of Charlottetown since James Charles MacDonald’s 21-year run ended nearly a century ago in 1912.
Fougere has headed a major restructuring of parishes that generated great angst over pending closures of church buildings. He has described the restructuring of the parish system as a gradual journey, not a knee-jerk change that would happen overnight.
“Our response is a pastoral plan that acknowledges the new geographic, economic and demographic realities of our diocese,” he wrote in a letter to the faithful of the diocese in 2007.
Grecco was born on March 4, 1946, in St. Catharines, Ont. He was ordained a priest on Sept. 2, 1973, for the Diocese of St. Catharines, and named Auxiliary Bishop of London on Dec. 5, 1997.
Since 2002, he has been an auxiliary bishop of Toronto.
As a member of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB), Bishop Grecco served on the former Episcopal Commission for the Evangelization of Peoples, and was a member and later also chairman of what was at the time the English Sector Commission for Christian Education. He currently is a representative of the CCCB on the National Council of the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, and is bishop ponens with the Canadian English Sector of the Pontifical Missions Society as well as with the Charismatic Renewal Services of Canada.
The Diocese of Charlottetown has a population of 63,240 Catholics in 58 parishes and missions, served by 49 diocesan priests, three priests who are members of religious communities, one permanent deacon and 111 religious sisters.