BROKEN Bay bishop and former Brisbane priest Anthony Randazzo will serve as the new president of the Federation of Catholic Bishops Conferences of Oceania for the next four years.
Bishop Randazzo was among eight members appointed to the Federation’s executive council on the assembly’s final day in Fiji.
During the week-long conference, Bishop Randazzo and fellow council members visited local faith communities and Fijian villages.
“We’ve had a marvellous opportunity to gather as bishops but also, in a synodal way, to listen and walk with the people of our own regions and to try to come together so that we might be able to further the mission of proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus Christ in our part of the world,” Bishop Randazzo said.
Former president and Suva Archbishop Peter Loy Chong said the assembly was a gathering in which he could see the Holy Spirit moving.
“It’s been a good experience of listening to other bishops and other people that have joined us,” he said.
“I’m very happy with the assembly.
“It’s left us with a mission and a mission that we want to carry out to the next stop, and that is four years’ time in Australia.”
Bishop Randazzo was ordained into the priesthood at St Stephen’s Cathedral, Brisbane in 1991 and later served in parishes across the archdiocese.
In 1998, he travelled to Rome to study Canon Law and upon his return was appointed vocations director for the archdiocese.
In 2004, Bishop Randazzo was called to Rome again and worked at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for five years.
He returned to Australia and served as Queensland’s Holy Spirit Seminary rector for six years before travelling to Jersuelm in 2015 to study.
The following year, he was appointed as an Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Sydney.
During the conference, Bishop Randazzo said he was grateful to receive suggestions about “how we might work together as leaders and as servants of God’s holy people so that together we might advance the mission of the Gospel”.
In a video message, he asked the people of Oceania to pray for the bishops and asked “that the Holy Spirit of God might draw us all together as one body of Christ”
