Under vaulted ceiling and soaring choir voices at the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception on Wednesday, the Vatican gave Denver its eighth bishop and fifth archbishop, Samuel Aquila.
At the close of installation ceremonies and High Mass that lasted nearly three hours, Aquila dedicated himself and his church to Mary, the mother of Jesus and first among his disciples.
“She will always lead us close to the heart of her son,” Aquila said, in a voice choked with emotion. She teaches us, he said, that “with God, all things are possible.”
With trumpet fanfare, amid the pageantry of the plumed hats and swords of Knights of Columbus — in a cathedral half-filled with the long robes, crimson, gold or white, of bishop, priest and cardinal — the papal representative, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, made official the Vatican’s appointment of Aquila.
And the new archbishop promised he will speak to the issues of the day, as his predecessor, Archbishop Charles Chaput, did, though some may try, he said, to silence voices of faith in the public square.
“A Christian must never think of his faith as a private path,” Aquila said in his homily. “Faith demands social responsibility for whatever we believe in.”
Aquila said that Catholics must stand with the unborn child and proclaim the dignity of marriage between a man and a woman.
“Every time an abortion occurs,” Aquila said, “a unique individual human being is snuffed out.
“Far too long, Catholic politicians on both sides of the aisle have been more faithful to the party platform than to their faith and the Gospel.”
Aquila told his fellow clergy: “We must speak with the voice of Christ.”
Aquila repeatedly made clear his devotion to Our Lady of Guadalupe, “the star” of the new Catholic evangelization, who possesses, he said, all the essential qualities of a disciple of Christ, which he listed repeatedly: “docility, receptivity, trust, confidence, humility and obedience.”
At the close of Mass, as he thanked Cardinal James Francis Stafford and Chaput, who now leads the church in Philadelphia, the roughly 800 people invited to attend the event erupted into sustained applause that turned into a standing ovation.
Aquila had said his farewell Mass in Fargo in late June. As former bishop of the 84,000-member Fargo Diocese in North Dakota, Aquila didn’t gain the high national profile Chaput did while in Denver.
Aquila, 61, now leads a much larger archdiocese — 550,000 Catholics in 25 counties over 40,000 square miles of northern Colorado.
Although born in Burbank, Calif., Aquila has claimed Denver as his spiritual home. He was ordained to the priesthood here in 1976.
“My heart is completely overwhelmed,” he said. “Never did I imagine 36 years ago that I would be standing here.”
Aquila served in ministry in Colorado through 1987, as assistant pastor of St. Mary’s Parish in Colorado Springs and of Christ the King Parish in Denver. He was senior pastor of Denver’s Guardian Angels Parish.
He held positions in the Denver Archdiocese in education and liturgy until 1999, when he became the founding rector of St. John Vianney Theological Seminary and chief executive of Our Lady of the New Advent Theological Institute.
Pope John Paul II named Aquila a monsignor in 2000. The next year, he received his appointment as coadjutor bishop of the Fargo Diocese in North Dakota and was appointed bishop when Bishop James Sullivan retired in 2002.
There were some headlines during Aquila’s 10 years in Fargo. In May 2011, Aquila approved the establishment of a chapel next to the Red River Women’s clinic, where abortions are performed.
In 2008, Aquila was among the bishops scolding Catholic voters who helped elect President Barack Obama or other candidates favoring abortion rights.
In his diocesan newspaper column that November, Aquila wrote there was “a misunderstanding among some Catholics that abortion is just one issue among many issues.” The right to life, he said, is “the first among all rights.”
Aquila said during the election season that he was “surprised and saddened at how little some Catholics know and accept the teaching of the church on the matter of abortion,” the Catholic News Service reported. He said some described themselves as “Catholic and pro-choice,” which he termed “impossible.”
Along with his political side, Aquila demonstrated a pastoral side in Fargo.
When North Dakota’s Red River rose in spring of 2009, Aquila praised and led Catholic volunteerism in relief efforts beyond the extensive work of Catholic Charities. The Cathedral of St. Mary’s vans evacuated patients from Fargo’s Veteran Affairs Medical Center, the Catholic News Service reported. And Catholic schoolchildren spent days sandbagging around the city to prevent flood damage.
At his own residence, Aquila took in seven seminarians forced from their lodgings by flooding.
In 2004, Aquila announced the hard decision that the diocese would close roughly 30 parishes by the end of 2010 because of shifts and declines in the Catholic population. There are now 132 Fargo Diocese parishes.
He also made his mark in parish life by reordering the way Catholic children have received the sacraments the past several years. Fargo students receive Reconciliation (confession) in second grade and first Eucharist and Confirmation (of Baptism, through the Holy Spirit) in third grade, several years earlier than in most American parishes.
Aquila decided in 2010 the Fargo Diocese would discontinue the local college seminary program at the end of the academic year because of low enrollment and high subsidies, $100,000 per student. The Cardinal Muench Seminary was graduating only three men in spring 2010, and it closed in 2011 after nearly 50 years.
The Fargo Diocese website describes Aquila as “an organizer, a builder and ardent pro-life candidate.” The bishop’s 100-year-old residence was renovated, and all diocesan offices and functions were merged into a new Pastoral Center on Bishop’s Boulevard in Fargo.
Electa Draper: 303-954-1276, edraper@denverpost.com or twitter.com/electadraper
Who is Catholic in Colorado?
Catholics account for about 19 percent of people in Colorado, compared with 24 percent of the national population, according to the Pew Forum on Religion in Public Life.
There are about 549,325 registered Catholics in the Archdiocese of Denver, or about 16.4 percent of the population, according to archdiocese figures.
About 52 percent of the Catholics in the 25 northern Colorado counties that make up the archdiocese are Latino. The general population in the same region is 70 percent Anglo, 21 percent Latino and 9 percent other races.
