Zadar, (IKA) – The President of the Croatian Conference of Bishops, the Archbishop of Zadar, Msgr. Želimir Puljić, congratulated the newly appointed Bishop of Krk, Friar Ivica Petanjak, on his new office, welcoming him into the Croatian Conference of Bishops as a good colleague and advisor in the Croatian episcopate. “I wish him fruitful labor with his flock in the Diocese of Krk. It is significant that he is a Capuchin, religious, and that he was appointed bishop in the Year of Consecrated Life. As he devotedly worked in the Capuchin monastery in Slavonia, as well as throughout Croatia, now the Lord is sending him to ‘catch fish’ on the islands of Krk. May he be blessed,” said Archbishop Puljić. The archbishop recalled that during the nineteenth century, three consecutive bishops of Dubrovnik were born in Krk, and for thirty-four years at the beginning of the twentieth century the Bishop of Dubrovnik was from Preko in the Archdiocese of Zadar, Msgr. Josip Marcelić. “Perhaps we used to think in terms of local patriotism, that a bishop should be a priest who was born in the region where he was appointed. However, looking at other countries, such as Italy, Germany and the United States, the practice is for bishops from one region to be sent to another. Indeed, it is easier for us to accept when we have a bishop who was born in our region. This makes us proud because we love our people. However, a bishop born in one place and appointed to another should never be anything unnatural. A bishop is not a private believer but a public witness to faith, who is required not only to bear witness to and cherish what he believes but to judge and suitably dictate what should believed. In this context, a believer should not look at a bishop with worldly eyes, ‘he is ours,’ but with the eyes of faith and vocation,” responded Msgr. Puljić to a question about the practice of a diocese receiving a bishop who is a priest from another local Church.
“In the Church, there are no strangers or foreigners. For Christians, every foreign country is a homeland and every homeland is a foreign country. From this perspective, it is necessary to consider the appointment of Friar Ivica Petanjak as the Bishop of Krk,” said Msgr. Puljić, expressing the hope that the faithful in the dioceses in Croatia where the appointments of new bishops are expected will engage in prayer, as opposed to the worldly logic of calculating who they could be. “A genuine believer wants God to send the one He has in His plan. Then, in such an atmosphere of prayer, the choice confirms the action of the Holy Spirit, which is often surprising, as was the sudden noise from the sky on Pentecost. This means that the Church is not led by the human element, although present, but by the Spirit of God, who can pleasantly surprise us,” said Archbishop Puljić on the appointment of Friar Ivica Petanjak as the new Bishop of Krk.