Lost Generations

Catholic World Report ^ | 11/1/11 | Jim Graves

[marshmallow]

Bishop Alexander Sample on the need for a renewal of orthodoxy

Bishop Alexander Sample, 50, is celebrating the fifth anniversary of his ordination and installation as bishop of Marquette, on Michigan’s upper peninsula. At the time of his episcopal ordination, he was the youngest Catholic bishop in the US, and the first to be born in the 1960s.

Sample was born in Montana and grew up in Las Vegas, Nevada, and attended Catholic schools there. Although he had thought about a vocation to the priesthood while growing up, he initially decided to pursue a career in engineering.

His family moved to Michigan, where he attended college. “I immediately fell in love with the upper peninsula of Michigan,” he recalled. “I loved the beautiful country and the people.”

After earning his BS and MS degrees in engineering, Sample opted to go to seminary. “I was more prayerful than many of my peers,” he remarked. “That opened me up to the action of the Holy Spirit.”

He was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Marquette in 1990, and filled a variety of diocesan positions, including serving simultaneously as pastor of three small parishes, before being ordained bishop of the diocese.

Marquette is a rural diocese; surrounded by three of the Great Lakes, much of it is wooded, and it is known for its cold winters. It has 50,000 Catholics, 94 parishes and missions, and 53 priests, many of whom must serve multiple parishes. Local industries include mining, lumber, and tourism, but much of the area is economically depressed, especially in the current recession.

Although a young bishop, Bishop Sample has been outspoken in his defense of Church teaching. In 2009, for example, he asked Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, retired auxiliary bishop of Detroit, not to speak in the Marquette diocese because of his........

[Biggirl]

Bookmarked.

[dominic flandry]

Lucky Marquette to have a true shepherd.