Finding ‘the gold of God’ — Welcome Bishop Williams!

Posted by bcadmin | Jan 27, 2022 | Bishop Joseph Williams, Bishop Williams, Featured, News, Welcome Bishop Williams | 0 |

On Nov. 23, 2021, Pope Francis shared eight “Beatitudes for Bishops” with Italian bishops gathered in Rome.

Among them, he told them, is “Blessed is the bishop who has a heart for the misery of the world. Who is not afraid to dirty his hands with the mud of the human soul in order to find the gold of God there, who is not scandalized by the sin and fragility of others because he knows his own misery, because the look of the Risen Crucified One will be the seal of infinite forgiveness.”

When Pope Francis shared those beatitudes, he was across the world from Minnesota, but he couldn’t have felt closer to Bishop Joseph Williams. The day before, then-Father Williams had received a call from Archbishop Christophe Pierre, apostolic nuncio to the U.S., informing him that Pope Francis had named him a bishop and appointed him as an auxiliary bishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Archbishop Pierre highlighted that beatitude Jan. 25 while speaking at Bishop Willliams’ ordination at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul. “Your excellency,” he said to Bishop Williams, then just minutes from his ordination, “it is my sincere hope that you take these words to heart, and that you allow them to animate your ministry here in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.”

Speaking to Bishop Williams’ pastoral experience, Archbishop Pierre, who represents Pope Francis to the U.S. Church, said that the new bishop knows “what it means to dirty your hands among the poor … only to discover the true treasure of the life of faith, which they possess.”

“You also know what it means to encounter the Risen Crucified one, just as Paul did on the road to Damascus,” he continued, a nod to the feast of the conversion of St. Paul, which the Church celebrated that day. “That encounter changed everything for him, and he was able to offer the hope that comes from the Risen Lord, and the Gospel to the nations. It is my sincere hope that working closely with Archbishop (Bernard) Hebda, you may continue to share the joy of the Gospel with the people of this archdiocese.”

In the following stories, The Catholic Spirit celebrates Bishop Williams, from his childhood in south Minneapolis and Stillwater, through his ordination as a priest and early ministry, which ranged from rural life and outreach to young adults and the disabled, to his current focus on neighborhood evangelization and Latino Catholics as the archdiocese’s vicar for Latino Ministry and leader of St. Stephen and Holy Rosary in south Minneapolis:

At Bishop Williams’ ordination on St. Paul feast, Archbishop Hebda stresses conversion

Mother’s hope for Bishop Williams: ‘stays close to Jesus’

Personal meaning to sacred symbols