Monday, August 13, 2012

Local Episcopal priest to convert to Catholicism


From Salem Mass.

A longtime North Shore clergyman is in line to become one of the first Episcopal priests in the country to be ordained as a Roman Catholic priest.

The Rev. Jurgen Liias, who led Christ Church in Hamilton for 14 years before forming a breakaway Episcopal church in Danvers, has applied to the Vatican to be ordained into a new U.S. ordinariate created by Pope Benedict XVI on Jan. 1.

Liias said he will resign as an Episcopal priest and will be confirmed as a Catholic in a Mass on Wednesday at St. Margaret Church in Beverly Farms. If his application is approved by the Vatican, he will be ordained as a Catholic priest this fall.

Sitting inside St. Margaret’s on Friday, still wearing his Episcopal priest collar, Liias said, “I feel like this is what God wants me to do.”

Liias is among the first wave of Episcopal priests who have responded to Pope Benedict’s invitation to join the Catholic Church through the ordinariate, which is designed to allow Anglicans to become Catholic while retaining elements of their Anglican heritage. Church officials describe an ordinariate as a parish without geographic boundaries.

More here-

http://www.salemnews.com/local/x994534588/Local-Episcopal-priest-to-convert-to-Catholicism

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