As the Father has sent me, so I send you.

The apostolic succession

Bishops, by divine institution, succeed the apostles through the Holy Spirit who has been given to them; they are constituted pastors in the Church, to be teachers of doctrine, priests of sacred worship, and ministers of governance.¹ The Council teaches that by episcopal consecration a bishop receives the fullness of the sacrament of orders, the high priesthood, the summit of the sacred ministry.²

This is why the record of the Church kept here is a record of bishops as much as of buildings. A diocese is defined by being entrusted to a bishop; the cathedral is defined by holding his chair; the priests of a diocese are his cooperators. Where the bishop is, there is the church he shepherds.

Diocesan, titular, coadjutor, auxiliary

A diocesan bishop governs the see entrusted to him. Other bishops (auxiliaries who assist a diocesan bishop, coadjutors who assist him with right of succession, bishops serving the Holy See or its missions) are each assigned a titular see, an ancient diocese that no longer has faithful of its own, so that no bishop is consecrated without a church.³ The custom is a quiet doctrine: the episcopate is never a rank without a people, even when the people survive only in name.

An archbishop is the bishop of an archdiocese, ordinarily the metropolitan of his province. The pallium he receives from the Roman Pontiff, a band of white wool worn over the chasuble, signifies the power he possesses in his province and his communion with the Church of Rome.⁴

The vacant see

When a bishop dies or his resignation is accepted, his see falls vacant, and the church he shepherded is spoken of in the old books as widowed.⁵ This record does not hide the widowhood: where a see stands vacant, the vacancy itself is recorded, until the day a new shepherd’s name can be written beside it. An empty line honestly kept is worth more than a guessed one.