Northern Ireland has its first Jesuit bishop with the appointment of Bishop Alan McGuckian to the highest leadership role in the Catholic Diocese of Down and Connor.
A native of Down and Connor, he is also something of an exception in being appointed bishop of his native diocese.
Following ongoing abuse scandals and the 2010 Apostolic Visitation to the Irish Catholic Church initiated by Pope Benedict XVI to root out corruption, it has been the practice that newly appointed bishops in Ireland are no longer native to the diocese where to which they are appointed.
This arose from a belief that bishops being native to their diocese was a factor in the widespread cover-up of clerical child sex abuse. The bishops, it was concluded, put the protection of priests they had known most of their lives before the safeguarding of children.
Down and Connor is the second largest Catholic diocese in Ireland, after Dublin, and the appointment of a native son there seems to indicate a confidence on the part of Rome that the Catholic Church in Ireland has got to grips with the clerical child sex abuse issue.Well respected by his peers, Bishop McGuckian will be 71 on February 26th and so will have at least four years as Bishop of Down and Connor before retirement. He has described himself recently as “of a more traditional stance” where the Church is concerned, noting in an interview last week that “it’s a more hierarchical Church, that is the nature of it”.
He and Bishop of Limerick Brendan Leahy represented the Irish Catholic Bishops at the Synod on Synodality in Rome last October.
His “traditional stance” was echoed in a statement on Friday when, reflecting on the “terrible wrench for me to leave the priests and people of Raphoe” in Co Donegal to move to Belfast, he recalled how it was “a bittersweet source of pride to me that Donegal uniquely had a pro-life majority in the abortion referendum some years ago.”
Down and Connor (mainly Co Antrim), as well as Dromore diocese (mainly Co Down), are the only two of the 26 Catholic dioceses on the island to be wholly within Northern Ireland. However, Dromore has been without a bishop since Bishop John McAreavey resigned in 2018 following controversy over his handling of allegations of clerical child sex abuse surrounding the late Fr Malachy Finnegan.
Since that resignation, the Catholic Primate and Archbishop of Armagh Eamon Martin has also been acting as administrator of Dromore.
From Cloughmills in Co Antrim, Bishop McGuckian is one of three brothers who became Jesuit priests, the others being older brothers Frs Bernard and Michael. After attendance at St MacNissi’s College he studied Irish and scholastic philosophy at Queen’s University Belfast before joining the Jesuits in 1972, spending most of the following decades in the Republic, including a period teaching at Clongowes Wood College in Co Kildare.
He succeeds the now Archbishop Noel Traenor, who has been serving as papal nuncio to the EU in Brussels since January of last year.
“This is where I come from and I am humbled and privileged that, after all my wanderings, the bishop of Rome has chosen to send me home,” Bishop McGuckian said following his appointment.
He welcomed the return of the institutions of government in Northern Ireland and said their absence had been a “serious democratic deficit”.
“I encourage everyone to do all in their power to ensure that we have ongoing and stable government here that works hard for the good of everyone and especially the most vulnerable. In addition, we Christians need to pray earnestly for our politicians. It is the grace of God in answer to people’s prayers that has led us out of the horror of past violence to where we are today,” he said.