{"id":15887,"date":"2017-10-11T02:06:51","date_gmt":"2017-10-11T09:06:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/andrew-bellisario-ordained-installed-as-juneaus-bishop\/"},"modified":"2017-10-11T02:06:51","modified_gmt":"2017-10-11T09:06:51","slug":"andrew-bellisario-ordained-installed-as-juneaus-bishop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/andrew-bellisario-ordained-installed-as-juneaus-bishop\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Bellisario ordained, installed as Juneau\u2019s bishop"},"content":{"rendered":"

As Father Andrew Bellisario sat down, nearly everyone else in the room stood.<\/p>\n

Bellisario, wearing a tall cap and holding a staff, eased himself into the chair at the front of the sanctuary at St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church. The chair had been empty since February, when Bishop Edward Burns was assigned to the Catholic Diocese of Dallas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now, it was full again, with Bellisario becoming the sixth Bishop of the Diocese of Juneau. The crowd of easily 350 people stood and cheered. Bishops from around the country and about 30 priests from around the state stood behind Bellisario, one of them holding his phone up to document the moment.<\/p>\n

Pope Francis and his staff selected Bellisario as the new bishop earlier this year, and Bellisario was introduced on July 11<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like to think that at some point when, after the archbishop here submitted names or my name to the Holy Father that (Francis) looked at the sheet of paper and saw the name there and said, \u2018I want that guy,\u2019\u201d Bellisario said, to chuckles from the crowd. \u201c\u2019Tell him to get on out there to Juneau and to be a good bishop for the people who live in Southeast Alaska.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

He was previously the Superior of the International Mission of the Vincentians in Alaska and has been a pastor in Anchorage since 2015.<\/p>\n

People came from all over the state and the country for the ceremony, and Christophe Pierre, the Apostolic Nuncio to the United States, made the trip from the Vatican. Burns came up from Dallas, the first time he\u2019s been back in Juneau since departing in February.<\/p>\n

Burns mingled with old friends prior to the ceremony, joking that \u201cthe weather committee for the installation did a great job\u201d with the sunny day Tuesday. Burns, who was Juneau\u2019s bishop for nearly eight years, said he\u2019s had time to meet Bellisario and is looking forward to seeing his work in Juneau.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s dedicated, committed, he\u2019s faithful in so many ways,\u201d Burns said. \u201cAll of it is pulled together by his administrative skills and he will be a true blessing for the Diocese. He has a great love for the people and he truly has a shepherd\u2019s heart.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the break between the two bishops, Father Pat Travers filled in as the Diocesan Administrator<\/a>. Travers, based in Ketchikan, took care of mostly business-related duties at the diocese and received a great deal of praise and recognition during Tuesday\u2019s ceremony.<\/p>\n

The Diocese of Juneau covers all of Southeast and includes around 10,000 Catholics. As Archbishop of Anchorage Paul D. Etienne said during his homily, the people of Southeast have high expectations for their bishops, and Burns set a high bar.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor St. Paul also said, \u2018I can do all things in Christ, who strengthens me,\u2019\u201d Etienne said, \u201ceven walking in the footsteps of Bishop Ed Burns.\u201d<\/p>\n

The crowd, which spilled out into the lobby, laughed. People were trickling in throughout the ceremony that lasted just over two hours. One of them, Kalei Wery, said he\u2019s been attending St. Paul the Apostle for 27 years and found it important to be there for Bellisario\u2019s ordination and installation.<\/p>\n

Wery complimented Travers\u2019 work, but said it\u2019s different when there\u2019s a permanent bishop in place. Wery arrived in plenty of time to see Bellisario make his remarks. Bellisario adjusted his tall bishop\u2019s hat just after motioning for the priests and attendees to be seated.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is gonna take a little getting used to,\u201d Bellisario joked as he stepped to the microphone.<\/p>\n

Bellisario thanked Travers and other staff members of the diocese, but spent much of the time at the microphone talking about his family. He told the story of his father coming from Italy and about his maternal grandmother having tickets on the Titanic in 1912 only to arrive to the dock too early and get on another vessel.<\/p>\n

The story that stood out was about his mother. While Bellisario was a child, his mother volunteered as the so-called Hot Dog Chairperson at his grade school. She would be there to give food (usually a hot dog, a bag of chips and a Popsicle) to students who didn\u2019t have enough money to buy their own lunch.<\/p>\n

Decades later, Bellisario was with his mother at a J.C. Penney in Arcadia, California, when they ran into a middle-aged woman. The woman recognized Bellisario\u2019s mother and thanked her for being there at school to feed her, and Bellisario\u2019s mother even remembered the woman\u2019s name.<\/p>\n

Service to others has been a cornerstone of Bellisario\u2019s work with the International Mission of Vincentians, which focuses on volunteer work, and he hopes to maintain that focus in Juneau.<\/p>\n

\u201cJesus would say, \u2018Whenever you did that for the least of my brothers, you did it for me,\u2019\u201d Bellisario said. \u201cThank you mom and dad for teaching me that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n

\u2022 Contact reporter Alex McCarthy at 523-2271 or alex.mccarthy@juneauempire.com.<\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Father Andrew Bellisario sat down, nearly everyone else in the room stood. Bellisario, wearing a tall cap and holding a staff, eased himself into the chair at the front of the sanctuary at St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church. The chair had been empty since February, when Bishop Edward Burns was assigned to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":428,"featured_media":15888,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-15887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/428"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15887\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15887"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=15887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}