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Bishop Ian Murray outisde St Columba’s Cathedral in Oban. To buy: t52bis01 |
BISHOP Ian Murray has given notice to Rome that he is resigning from his post after eight years in charge.
Bishop Murray has just turned 75 and has to offer his resignation so the church can appoint a successor.
‘In September I wrote to the Pope and I received a letter saying they had accepted my resignation,’ the bishop told The Courier.
‘We are now in the nunc pro tunc situation which translates in English as ‘now for then’. I am here until a successor is appointed.’
The bishop says the move to appoint his successor is a fairly secretive process directed by Rome which takes advice from clergymen in Scotland before approaching the candidate to see if he would willing take up the post.
The bishop’s rural diocese stretches as far north as Kingussie, west to Skye and the Western Isles, all of Argyll and Lochaber and as far south as Arran.
Bringing Leodhasachs, Uibhisteachs and ‘townies’ from Oban, Fort William and Dunoon together more regularly has been one of the bishop’s achievements, he believes. He said: ‘If you compare say Stornoway to Dunoon they are completely different and the people have different ways of thinking.
‘One of the difficult things is to maintain contact because it is such a vast area.
‘Visiting the whole area has been very important so people got to know me and we have held meetings to get all the people together and they know each other much better now.
‘There is a whole change of culture in Scotland. In the old days I would go and visit people in their houses. But now people don’t open their doors.
‘If you do go in the television is on and you end up seeing Emmerdale with them! The kids are more interested in the telly.
‘But the youngsters are very natural here. One youngster told me all the history of Pope Benedict and he had got all the information from Google!’
Bishop Murray is planning to retire to Edinburgh and is looking forward to less travelling than he has been used to.
‘I have been living out of a suitcase for a long time. At the moment I wake up and reach for my bedside lamp but can’t find it because I don’t know if its Daliburgh or Oban!
‘We have a very good treasurer and the diocese is very financially secure now.
‘There are also three new churches in Lewis and Skye. Poverty is not a problem here unlike 100-150 years ago but depopulation is. We are burying more people than we are baptising.
‘I would think that our numbers are going down because youngsters don’t come back once they leave their villages. But it is interesting that people who have no connection with the church come to our priests with their problems be it drugs or whatever.’
The bishop says Oban is the most sensible location for his job with good access to the islands with the ferries and road and rail links to the rest of the diocese.
‘In 1878 when the diocese set was up again after the Reformation they wanted to base the bishop in Drimnin near Lochaline because 1,500 Catholics lived there. There were only four in Oban!
‘But the bishop at the time saw that the railway was coming to Oban and that was the future so that’s why the post has been based here.’
The bishop says the church has welcomed the influx of eastern Europeans to Scotland but says not that many actually attend Mass.
‘They are very hard workers and a lot of them are working in hotels so perhaps they can’t get to church,’ he said. ‘Some of them are very integrated and in Inverness a congregation of 1,000 people has more than doubled in the last three years to 3,000.
‘I went to a confirmation in Fort William and about six or seven kids were Polish. We went to a hotel afterwards for tea but none of the Poles came. If you can’t speak the language then it’s difficult.’
