Mgr Carmelo Zammit has been ordained Gibraltar’s new Catholic Bishop at a Mass in St Paul’s Cathedral in Mdina, Malta.
In his homily for the Episcopal Ordination, Cardinal Vincent Nichols said that it was important for the Church in Europe, and therefore Gibrator, to proclaim and practice the values and qualities that lie at the heart of European civilisation:
“To be bishop of such a place is, I believe, a privilege and a challenge. It is to be responsible for an outpost of Europe, a place where all that Europe strives to stand for is first to be met.
“The great Spanish writer, Ortega y Gasset, wrote that civilisation is above all the will to live together.”
The Cardinal prayed for the new bishop:
“We ask of God a great and wonderful gift: that Mgr Carmelo leave this Cathedral a changed man, a man on whom has been bestowed the astonishing gift of becoming a bishop, a successor of the apostles, a man endowed with new power and authority, a man now bound to Christ more deeply than ever before. In my humble experience, ordination as a bishop brings with it a more radical change than even the change wrought by ordination as a priest.”
“Celebrating the Episcopal Mass of Ordination on the feast day of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Cardinal Nichols concluded by praying for the maternal intercession of Our Lady of Europe that “this precious continent and heritage, to which we are all committed, may not lose its way or cease to live by its finest values.
“We pray that our witness, and the witness of this new bishop, will draw many to Christ in Whom is the fullness of our humanity and Who alone can save us from our fears and contradictions.”
Bishop Zammit will be installed on 24 September 2016.
You can download the full text of Cardinal Nichols’ homily below:
cbcew.org.uk/home/the-bishops/carmelo-zammit
Biography on the Bishops’ Conference website.
