This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Next week, the Catholic Diocese of Salt Lake City will have been without a bishop for 18 months, the longest time in its history, writes Gary Topping in this week's diocesan newspaper.
Topping should know. As Utah's Catholic archivist, he is intimately aware of the faith's nearly 150-year history in the Beehive State. To while away the time while waiting for a new bishop, he decided to look back at the lengths of time between previous bishops.
"The record, in terms of brevity, was the interim between Bishop Duane G. Hunt's death on March 31, 1960," Topping writes in the Intermountain Catholic, "and installation of his replacement, Bishop Joseph L. Federal,"
The move was, in fact, "instantaneous," he says, because Federal had been named coadjutor "with right of succession" nearly two years earlier.
The longest interim until now was "between Bishop George H. Niederauer (installed as archbishop of San Francisco on Feb. 15, 2006) and Bishop John C. Wester (installed in Salt Lake City on March 24, 2007)," Topping writes. "Archbishop Wester was installed in Santa Fe on June 4, 2015, so we broke the record in July."
Typically, he says, a bishop vacancy would last under a year.
Interim administrator Monsignor Colin F. Bircumshaw seems to be doing fine leading Utah's 300,000-plus Catholics, but there are decisions he can't make, Topping writes. He isn't about "to mount any new initiatives or create new programs that have to have a bishop's approval. ... We're kind of marking time."
So what's the holdup?
Neither Topping nor any other diocesan official has an answer.
"Hey, I'll read about it in the paper," he writes, "the same day you do."
Peggy Fletcher Stack