The bishop's Mass

St Augustine's Catholic Church had a special liturgy this afternoon as the bishop of the Lafayette Diocese, Bishop Timothy Doherty, concelebrated a Mass with ten or eleven priests from the Fowler Deanery. The Mass was to mark the end of the Year of Faith, October 2012 to November 2013. This was the first time that a Mass for an entire deanery had been concelebrated at St. Augustine's and it may have been a first for the diocese.

Catholic dioceses are subdivided into deanerys. The Fowler deanery consists of the parishes in Benton, Newton, and Jasper Counties. I am not sure what the deaneries do in the Lafayette diocese.

After the Mass there was a reception and a short talk by the bishop in which he urged people to reach out to others and he encouraged ecumenism.