Bishop Richard Pates, apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Crookston, left, and Bishop-designate Andrew Cozzens, right, meet Rosie O’Leary, center, a lifelong parishioner of Sacred Heart in East Grand Forks and mother of 10, all of whom attended Catholic schools. Their visit was part of Bishop Cozzens’ introduction to the Diocese of Crookston Oct. 18, the day it was announced that Pope Francis had named him its next bishop.

Bishop Richard Pates, apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Crookston, left, and Bishop-designate Andrew Cozzens, right, meet Rosie O’Leary, center, a lifelong parishioner of Sacred Heart in East Grand Forks and mother of 10, all of whom attended Catholic schools. Their visit was part of Bishop Cozzens’ introduction to the Diocese of Crookston Oct. 18, the day it was announced that Pope Francis had named him its next bishop. DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

“What a treat!” Rosie O’Leary gushed as she stood on her front porch, shaking Bishop Andrew Cozzens’ hand. It was a surprise visit for the 90-year-old, who has lived all her life in East Grand Forks, where she and her first husband raised 10 children at Sacred Heart parish.

She, Bishop Cozzens and Bishop Richard Pates talked about the family sugar beet farm — now run by one of her two sons — her 36 grandchildren and her love of her Irish ancestry. (“Cozzens” is Irish, too, the bishop told her.) Rosie lives with Alzheimer’s disease and was surprised to be reminded of her age, but she was visibly overjoyed to be visited by her new bishop.

The O’Leary home was Bishop Cozzens’ final stop before vespers Oct. 18, the day he was named bishop-designate of the Diocese of Crookston. Archbishop Christophe Pierre, U.S. apostolic nuncio, shared the news around 5 a.m. Central time, shortly after the Vatican announced it in Rome. An auxiliary bishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis, Bishop Cozzens had arrived in Crookston the evening before, and after the announcement, had breakfast with members of the chancery staff.

MAN OF PRAYERBishop Cozzens prayed evening vespers at the Cathedral with the diocese’s priests, and deacons and their wives. In a short homily, he reflected on the meaning of the beatitude “poor in spirit” and asked the clergy to be men of prayer.
“I’m grateful to God for being here,” he told them. “I come to you and to Crookston as your bishop not as a man who claims to have it all together, not as a man who believes that I have all the answers. I do have a fire in my heart and I have a mission, and I’m here to engage that mission.
“I’ll be energetic in the things that I do,” he continued, “but what I really promise you is that because I know my own poverty, I will be a man of prayer. That’s the one thing I can guarantee you. I can guarantee it because that’s the way my life has been lived. Prayer is the most important thing in my life. And I really want to encourage you to make that your own priority.”

At 10 a.m., about 30 people — many of them parish and chancery staff, with others who had attended daily Mass — gathered in the narthex of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception for a livestreamed news conference. During questions, Nancy Cournia, an 87-year-old Cathedral parishioner, stood up and told him, “I just feel the Holy Spirit so strongly” with his appointment.

“I’m just happy and excited about what God is sending us,” she later said.

Many well-wishers commented on his relatively young age — at 53, he’s 22 years away from 75, the age bishops typically retire. When he was ordained an auxiliary bishop in 2013, he was the second youngest bishop in the country. Several Catholics interviewed expressed hope that his youthfulness, plus his experience in NET Ministries and St. Paul’s Outreach — national teen and college ministries, respectively, both based in St. Paul — might lead to more young people at Mass and in the Church. One man asked him about bringing his guitar to youth events.

Bishop Pates, left, and Bishop-designate Cozzens, center, visit with third-graders of Sacred Heart School in East Grand Forks. The students were raking leaves at a home across the street from their school and its parish Oct. 18 for the school’s annual Rake-a-Thon service day and fundraiser.

Bishop Pates, left, and Bishop-designate Cozzens, center, visit with third-graders of Sacred Heart School in East Grand Forks. The students were raking leaves at a home across the street from their school and its parish Oct. 18 for the school’s annual Rake-a-Thon service day and fundraiser. DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

“It’s true, I do play guitar, and I am in a band,” he said with a laugh, explaining it was a group of priests. “We played twice, the band. It’s called ‘The Second Collection.’ Our joke is that the second collection isn’t ever as good as the first collection.”

Hope Bach, the Cathedral’s youth minister and director of religious education, thinks Bishop Cozzens’ personability and enthusiasm will further boost the momentum gaining around youth and faith she said she’s seen since the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted regular life.

“Everything broke down and now it’s like we’re rebuilding almost, and I love what is being built,” said Bach, 25.

Elaine Boucher, a 78-year-old Cathedral parishioner whose late husband and now sons farm 2,200 acres of wheat, soybeans and sugar beets, asked Bishop Cozzens if he would bless fields.

“Of course I bless fields,” he answered enthusiastically. “We need those fields to feed us.”

That was the right answer, she later said. She was raised on a farm, and she and her husband began having their fields blessed when they were first married 54 years ago. Bishop Pates was the most recent bishop to offer those prayers, she said, noting with a smile that after he was done with the land, he also blessed her family with a healthy dose of holy water.

COZZENS 6 Bishop Pates, left, and Bishop Cozzens, center, talk with Jennnifer LeMire, left, a third-grade teacher at Sacred Heart School in East Grand Forks.

COZZENS 6
Bishop Pates, left, and Bishop Cozzens, center, talk with Jennnifer LeMire, left, a third-grade teacher at Sacred Heart School in East Grand Forks. DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

Bishop Pates, bishop emeritus of Des Moines, Iowa, has served as the Crookston diocese’s apostolic administrator since April. He is himself a former auxiliary bishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis and knows Bishop Cozzens from his early priesthood.

“He really has great devotion to the Holy Spirit,” he said, noting the bishop-designate’s longtime involvement with the charismatic renewal and membership in the Companions of Christ, a fraternal community of priests. “He has a real love for the clergy.”

Bishop Cozzens had visited Crookston previously for priests’ ordination, but his first experience was as a NET missionary in 1991, when the northwest Minnesota diocese — from Barnesville in its south to Warroad at the Canadian border — was his team’s first assignment. While meeting with students of the Cathedral’s pre-K-6 school before lunch, he told them he had stood in that very cafeteria before, when he was just out of college.

He took questions from the kids, and arms stretched high: When was he born? What’s it like in Kansas (where he attended Benedictine College, graduating in 1991)? What’s his favorite thing about being a priest? Why did he want to be a bishop? (His answer, to the last one, is that he didn’t want to be a bishop, but God asked him to be, and he wants to follow God.)

Upon hearing that he grew up in Colorado, one boy asked if was hard to mow the lawn there, because of the mountains. Bishop Cozzens assured him that it was possible to mow his childhood yard. Before he left, the children outstretched both arms and sang “May the blessing of the Lord be upon you,” and then he offered his episcopal blessing to them.

In the afternoon, after Mass and lunch with Benedictine and Josephite sisters adjacent to the Cathedral at Mount St. Benedict Monastery, Bishop Cozzens visited with third-graders from Sacred Heart School in East Grand Forks who were piling leaves under a deep blue autumn sky. Their effort was for their school’s annual Rake-a-Thon, a service project and fundraiser that typically nets around $40,000. Bishop Cozzens grabbed a rake while talking with the excited students.

Bishop-designate Cozzens, left, speaks Oct. 18 with Bishop Emeritus Victor Balke, who led the Crookston diocese from 1976–2007, at the Sacred Heart rectory in East Grand Forks, where Bishop Balke lives.

Bishop-designate Cozzens, left, speaks Oct. 18 with Bishop Emeritus Victor Balke, who led the Crookston diocese from 1976–2007, at the Sacred Heart rectory in East Grand Forks, where Bishop Balke lives. DAVE HRBACEK | THE CATHOLIC SPIRIT

Sacred Heart is the only Catholic school with a high school in northwest Minnesota, and it also serves northeast North Dakota. Eight-year-old Annie Downs, who attends both the school and its parish, said she was surprised to see the new bishop walk across the street to meet with her and her classmates. She said she loves to go to Mass and say the rosary at school, and that it was “cool” to meet her bishop on his first day. As Bishop Cozzens left, he asked Downs and her friends to pray for him.

In his homily at Mount St. Benedict, he noted that the monastery struck him as “the heart of prayer of the diocese.” The sisters founded the monastery there in 1923, on 37 acres next to the Red Lake River. In July, the diocese announced that it was raising $15 million to purchase the property and the sisters’ 68,000-square-foot building. The arrangement would allow the aging sisters to continue to live and pray in their monastery, while providing offices for the bishop and diocesan staff, and retreat and guest accommodations.

The campaign is titled “The Perfect Fit” because that’s how Bishop Pates and other leaders see it: the best arrangement for the sisters and chancery staff, whose current building, built in 1951 in northwest Crookston, is in need of repair and inadequate for their needs.

The honorary chairperson of that campaign is Bishop Emeritus Victor Balke, who led the diocese for 31 years from 1976 to 2007. While in East Grand Forks the afternoon of his announcement day, Bishop Cozzens met with Bishop Balke at the Sacred Heart rectory, where he lives.

Bishop Balke, 90, said he hopes that Bishop Cozzens can bring his heart for and expertise in evangelization to the diocese, and “lead that people and the priests into a deep, deep love of Jesus Christ” and that “would make this diocese a wonderful spiritual home for everybody.”

“He’s a wonderful man, very loving, in love with the Church and with the people of God,” Bishop Balke said. “I’m very, very pleased, very happy.”