Bishop Anthony Bosco, R.I.P.

When you die at the age of 85, few people remember that you were once a "boy wonder."  But that was the case with Bishop Anthony Bosco.

Bishop Bosco died on July 2 at his home in Greensburg of natural causes.  He served as the third bishop of Greensburg from 1987 to 2004.  A native of the North Side of Pittsburgh, Anthony Bosco was the son of a tailor who was ordained a priest in 1952 for the Diocese of Pittsburgh.  He was sent to Rome by then-Bishop John Dearden to get a degree in canon law, and when he returned home served in the chancery.  For most of the next decade he served under Pittsburgh Bishop John Wright.  Clerical rumor credits Wright with having the influence to have Bosco named auxiliary bishop in Pittsburgh at the age of 42 in 1970.  The previous year Wright was named a Cardinal by Pope Paul VI and appointed to head the Congregation of the Clergy.  There were many other--older--Pittsburgh clerics as potential candidates for an appointment as auxiliary bishop, but Bosco was the one chosen.

Then a funny thing happened--nothing.  For the next 17 years, under Bishops Vincent Leonard and Anthony Bevilacqua, Bishop Bosco toiled away at the routines of an auxiliary.  Confirmations (50 or more a year), graduations, parish anniversaries, diocesan meetings by the score, diaconate ordinations, ceremonies of all kind--when the head bishop either couldn't or didn't want to attend. Every year Bishop Bosco would come up with some cutsey homeletic story/joke/trick, and use it in his dozens of confirmation ceremonies. 

In 1987 the second bishop of Greensburg, William Connare, passed away, and Bishop Bosco was named to succeed him by Pope John Paul II.  No longer a "young bishop," Bosco was well known among his brother bishops around the country.  He had been elected to chair the communications committee of the national conference of bishops by his peers, and was "a good quote" to reporters, print and tv locally and nationally.  

Once time I bumped into Bishop Bosco, and complimented him on his comments in a recent tv interview.  In that deep gravelly voice (seasoned by his cigars), he said to me, "Remember, Frank, when they interview you, always do it live.  Then they can't cut-and-paste your remarks and take them out of context."  

As the excellent obituary by Ann Rogers in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (7/3/2013) notes, Bishop Bosco showed his true colors as a diocesan bishop.  He was fore-square in favor of the church using the gifts and talents of the laity.  He supported the transition from "parish" councils to "pastoral" councils, engaged his diocese in a thorough pastoral planning process to readjust to changing demographic trends, and was not afraid to make hard decisions regarding the closing of parishes and church buildings.  All of these attitudes flowed from his support of the Second Vatican Council.

In an indirect way, I had a hand in one of Bishop Bosco's most controversial moves.  (I told this story when I did a blog post on the death of Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua on February 12, 2012.)  Bishop Bevilacqua had asked me, a member of the priest council, to put together a committee to examine the age for reception of the sacrament of confirmation, and to make a recommendation.  Our committee's recommendation was to restore the order of the sacraments of initiation   baptism-confirmation-first communion.  Further, we suggested that the pastor confirm all children at the third grade level, and then in the same celebration of the Mass, give them their first holy communion.  We made our presentation in the spring of 1987, and it went nowhere.

But more than two years later, after Bishop Bosco became head bishop in Greensburg, he set in motion a several year process to do just what we recommended.  To my knowledge he was the first bishop in the U.S. to lower the age deliberately, on the rationale of confirmation's linkage to the order of the sacraments of initiation.  Our committee didn't know it, but the really attentive listener in the room at that priest council meeting was not Bishop Bevilacqua but auxiliary Bishop Bosco.  

My understanding is that the priests of the diocese never really understood this decision, and never really liked it.  Religious educators didn't buy it either.  They by and large used confirmation--at the 7th or 8th or 9th grade level--as a way to keep the kids in class and extend their formal religious learning as long as possible.  I don't think that Bosco's innovation has survived his successor, although I have read that it is in ten other dioceses around the country.

Throughout his ministry as a priest and bishop, he was a down-to-earth Pittsburgher, who never forgot his Italian roots and lived out his service quietly and matter-of-factly.

Anthony Bosco, may the angels and saints receive you (and your cigars, and humor) joyfully into the realms of heaven.