Bishop Robert Brennan spoke with fondness about his tenure as shepherd of the Diocese of Columbus and with enthusiasm concerning the opportunity to lead another diocese as he was installed as the eighth bishop of Brooklyn, New York.
“I loved these last three years in Ohio,” he said at the start of his homily during his installation ceremony on Tuesday, Nov. 30 at the Co-Cathedral of St. Joseph and St. Teresa of Avila in Brooklyn. “I loved the variety of life, especially coming to know and love rural life. I was ready to spend my life there and, quite honestly, kicked and screamed a little when I learned I needed to move.
“I met wonderful people and worked with heroic and holy priests. I wouldn’t trade these last years for anything and will always appreciate the opportunity afforded to me.”
Then, in a reference to his background as someone who had “spent 50 of my 59 years right here on Long Island breathing the saltwater air” before coming to Ohio, he said, “I did keep asking, ‘Where do you keep the boardwalk? How do I get to the beach?’ Somehow, the Lord in his providence has called me back to the shore.”
Bishop Brennan spent his last two months in Columbus making a “farewell tour” of the diocese after his appointment to the Brooklyn diocese, succeeding the retiring Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, was announced on Sept. 29. In a news conference before the installation ceremony, he said he had gone through “a very long goodbye in these last two months, from the day my appointment was announced to this past weekend. Now that I’m here (in Brooklyn), I’m really here, and I’m excited.”
He said that he had spent his first few days in his new home “learning the neighborhoods by walking around,” and that “my first step as bishop will be to get to know people, to understand even better the good things happening here.”
“I don’t have a next step,” the bishop said. “I have to learn what that next step will be through discernment.” He said that in his first months in Columbus, “I learned that a lot of really good things were happening there, and I could bring my own mark to them. … It would be a little foolish to come here and say, ‘Now here’s the Brennan way of doing things.’”
He followed with a reference to his new diocese’s multiplicity of ethnic groups, who represent more than 160 nations and speak about 80 languages. “The whole world is here in Brooklyn, and with each of the different communities that come to the Church, it is renewed here. Like the tide going in and coming out, it’s always being refreshed,” he said.
Much of Bishop Brennan’s time in Columbus coincided with the continuing COVID-19 pandemic. All Catholic churches in Ohio were closed for more than two months from mid-March to the end of May 2020, while Catholic schools switched to online learning for the final portion of the 2019-2020 school year as the effects of the pandemic initially were being felt.
The schools reopened in August 2020. Churches and schools are continuing to make adjustments related to the pandemic and the possible impact of its latest strain, known as the omicron variant.
“I don’t know enough about the new variant,” Bishop Brennan said, “but I’m proud that in Columbus we found very good ways to gather again and are well-poised to continue dealing with this new development.”
In Columbus, Bishop Brennan began a strategic planning initiative known as Real Presence Real Future, which has invited everyone in the diocese to express their concerns and desires and to help determine the best path toward increasing the presence of the Church in the diocese’s 23 counties.
The Brooklyn diocese, which covers the New York City boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens, is in the midst of a similar consultation process leading to a diocesan synod. The process also is taking place throughout the world and will conclude with a synod of bishops at the Vatican in 2023.
Becoming part of the process “gives me a great chance right away to get to know the different areas of the diocese,” Bishop Brennan said. He said that in reference to the process, Archbishop Christophe Pierre, the Vatican’s apostolic nuncio to the United States, had advised the nation’s bishops at their recent meeting in Baltimore to “speak frankly and listen carefully.”
At the installation ceremony, attended by about 1,200 people, Archbishop Pierre read Pope Francis’ letter appointing Bishop Brennan to his new position, as he did when Bishop Brennan was installed as bishop of Columbus on March 29, 2019, after spending seven years as auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, New York, where he grew up.
Before reading the letter, the archbishop said he knew “there are many tears in Columbus today,” not only because of Bishop Brennan’s departure, but also because Michigan defeated Ohio State in football three days earlier. Bishop Brennan responded at the beginning of his homily by thanking the archbishop “for your condolences to Ohio State.”
After it was read, the letter was presented to the Brooklyn diocesan chancellor and the diocesan College of Consultors, an advisory body of priests. As he did at his Columbus installation ceremony, Bishop Brennan then walked around the cathedral and displayed the document, written in elaborate, calligraphic-style scrollwork, so that all could see it.
He then was escorted to the cathedra, the bishop’s chair, by Archbishop Pierre and Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York, who also had been at his Columbus installation. The bishop’s coat of arms, with his episcopal motto, “Thy Will Be Done,” earlier had been placed above the chair. He then was presented with a crosier (bishop’s staff), and at that point officially became bishop of the nation’s fifth-largest diocese, which has about 1.5 million Catholics among its 4.9 million residents.
Since the installation took place on the feast day of St. Andrew the Apostle, who was martyred, the principals of the installation Mass wore red vestments, the color of martyrdom. Most of Bishop Brennan’s homily focused on Andrew, who John’s gospel says was called by Jesus and immediately urged his brother, Simon Peter, to join him, providing perhaps the earliest example of missionary discipleship.
Bishop Brennan said one of the notable things about Andrew was that while other Apostles sometimes held back, Andrew usually was out in the crowd. “In the same fashion of Jesus, he was stepping into the nitty-gritty reality of the people,” he said. “He was out among the people, talking and listening to them.” The bishop noted that in the parable of the loaves and fishes, Andrew is credited with being the one who told Jesus that a boy in the crowd had those items available to share.
Just before the conclusion of the Mass, Bishop Brennan thanked Bishop DiMarzio for his 18 years of service as bishop. “I’m quite fortunate I have this big inheritance” of faith left to him by his predecessor, he said, then humorously quoted from John’s Gospel, saying, “I have much more to say to you, but you cannot bear to hear it right now.”
The installation was preceded by processions of civic and religious leaders and of clergy, including 42 bishops and Cardinal Joseph Tobin, archbishop of Newark, New Jersey. Attending from the Diocese of Columbus were 14 diocesan priests; Father Steven Beseau, rector-president of the Pontifical College Josephinum; representatives of orders of women religious serving the diocese; and many laypersons.