By Jean Gonzalez, Florida Catholic, OSV News
FORT MYERS, Fla. — Is it possible a singular moment could quantify the emotions elicited during an episcopal ordination?
For those who witnessed the ordination of Bishop Emilio Biosca Agüero, it was a quiet moment before the Liturgy of the Eucharist.
His family brought up the gifts. Slowly his father ambled down the aisle of St. John XXIII Church in Fort Myers, along with his mother, who used a walker alongside her husband.
Meeting in front of the altar, as if in sync, Maria del Carmen Agüero and Emilio Rodolfo Biosca Sr. laid their hands upon their son’s cheek and forehead. Bishop Biosca put his hands upon each of his parents’ shoulders. Their heads bowed, the emotions of the moment were at the surface. They stayed like that for a minute, as tears filled the eyes of some in the pews, 1,600 strong.
Love. Gratitude. Commitment. Service. Humility. Longing. Trust. Grace. All in less than 60 seconds. That moment encapsulated the July 11 ordination and installation of Bishop Biosca as the third shepherd of the Diocese of Venice.
“Pope Leo is like a Hallmark card,” said Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, retired archbishop of Boston, who was the homilist and served as a co-consecrator of the new bishop, a fellow Capuchin Franciscan. “He cares to send the very best.”
The ordination marked the passing of leadership from now-retired Bishop Frank J. Dewane, who served the diocese for two decades. Cardinal O’Malley thanked him for his “outstanding leadership and fruitful tenure.”
The afternoon ordination drew faithful from each of the diocese’s 61 parishes and eight missions. Dozens of priests filled the pews, including fellow Capuchin Franciscans from across the United States.
The new bishop’s episcopal brothers of Florida were there for support, along with other U.S. prelates, including Bishop Jacques E. Fabre of Charleston, South Carolina, who served as a priest in the Diocese of Venice.
Also there to celebrate were prelates who had known Bishop Biosca during his years as a priest, including Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory, retired archbishop of Washington, and retired Bishop Álvaro Julio Beyra Luarca of Santísimo Salvador de Bayamo y Manzanillo, Cuba. Bishop Biosca served as a priest in the Cuban diocesan and considers the elder bishop a mentor and friend.
Bishop Biosca was born Dec. 15, 1964, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the third of seven children and the first to be born in the United States after his parents emigrated from Cuba. He entered the Capuchin Franciscans in 1984, and made first profession of vows in Pittsburgh in 1988 and solemn vows in 1991.
He was ordained a priest in 1994, at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart in Washington. That connection to his ordination came full circle.
He had been serving as pastor of the Shrine of the Sacred Heart since March 1, 2019, when on May 13, Pope Leo XIV appointed him as the third bishop of Venice, succeeding Bishop Dewane, who was retiring at age 76.
And, on July 11, he was ordained a bishop by the same man who ordained him as a priest — Cardinal O’Malley.
“I speak as someone who has known Bishop Biosca for 50 years or more. … I watched Emilio grow up. He came to live with us at the house of discernment, Casa Galilea. Out of that little community came many wonderful priests, and five bishops and two cardinals. There must have been something in the water,” said the cardinal, who in the early 1970s was a priest at Sacred Heart and worked with Latin American migrants in Washington.
“It was my privilege to ordain him a priest and today be a co-consecrator at his episcopal ordination. I am truly overwhelmed. I feel verklempt,” he added, using the yiddish word made popular by a Michael Myers character on “Saturday Night Live.”
The cardinal became friends with the family after Emilio Sr., a dentist, helped establish a dental clinic for the immigrants in the District of Columbia area. He had followed the younger Capuchin’s vocation, including when he served as a missionary in Papua New Guinea and in Cuba.
As a priest, then-Father Biosca volunteered and was sent to serve in the Capuchin mission in Papua New Guinea from 1994 to 2004, where he served predominantly the Kewa and Wiri speaking peoples in the Kagua, Ialibu and Pangia areas of the Southern Highlands.
From 2002 to 2004 he served as the director of novices for the Capuchin Novitiate in Pangia.
In 2007, Bishop Biosca entered Cuba, in collaboration with the Capuchin Spanish delegation of Madrid. He spent his first year in Havana, then three years as pastor of La Pastora Parish in Santa Clara, and his last eight years there on the eastern side of the country in the Diocese of Bayamo-Manzanillo.
Cardinal O’Malley said the Diocese of Venice is not a missionary diocese, joking the demographics are described as a “silver tsunami,” and it is a profile that does not fit where Capuchin bishops general serve — mission lands.
But he said the appointment is “another one of God’s surprises” in Bishop Biosca’s life, and along with older, loyal Catholics are the poor and marginalized, many of whom are immigrants who work, as laborers in the fields and in the tourism industry.
Cardinal O’Malley said Bishop Biosca’s “deep love” for “Jesus crucified” and the Franciscan virtues of simplicity, solidarity and joy will prepare him for his service in Venice.
“Emilio, God’s providence has placed you in a new and a different reality. … You responded generously years ago by embracing a call to the priesthood. Today is a second calling,” Cardinal O’Malley said in his homily. “Remember always, that your ministry is above all a call to follow Christ, sharing in the hardships of the Gospel. … Jesus is teaching us that all ministry is about love, about laying down your life for the flock and that ministry is borne out of a deep friendship with the risen Lord.”
While the new bishop might feel now or at times “unworthy” of his position, Cardinal O’Malley stressed that is a good thing. He reminded him he will be a “fisher of new disciples” and that he should rely on the gift of God, which is not a spirit of “cowardice, but of power, of love and of self-control.”
“Without bishops there would be no priests. No magisterium. No power to forgive sins. No possibility of Eucharist. That is why the church sees the ordination as a bishop as the key to our identity and our survival,” the cardinal said. “Brother Emilio will receive the same ordination and the same share in the apostle’s role. Jesus is calling (you) to follow him and to be a shepherd after his own heart.”
In his remarks before the close of Mass, Bishop Biosca offered gratitude to those who had previously served in the District of Columbia, Cuba and Papua New Guinea and to all his fraternal brothers for their kindness, support, leadership, wisdom and faith.
He especially thanked Bishop Dewane for “receiving this beautiful diocese that is vibrant in faith and is filled with the gifts of its people,” and also gave special thanks to the Cuban and Cuban-born bishops there — Bishop Beyra, retired Bishop Felipe J. Estévez of St. Augustine, retired Bishop José Felix Perez of Havana and retired Auxiliary Bishop Octavio Cisneros of Brooklyn, New York — describing them as “intrepid disciples of our Venerable Félix Varela, living a faith as faithful sons of Our Lady of Charity.”
Father Varela, a candidate for sainthood, was a 19th-century Cuban priest who helped organize Cuba’s independence movement from Spain.
“Jesus Christ alone is the good shepherd. We (are) blessed to be entrusted for a time to care for the flock,” said Bishop Biosca, who besides English and Spanish speaks Tok Pisin, a Creole language spoken throughout Papua New Guinea.
“This is the vocation of every shepherd in the Church — to love Christ’s people; to care for them with tenderness; to strengthen the weak; to seek the loss; to accompany the suffering, whether wealthy or whether poor. To proclaim the Gospel faithfully and always place the good of the flock above personal self-interests. The shepherd belongs to the people. Together the shepherd and the flock belong to Christ.”
But to his family and friends, including his parents who celebrated 65 years of marriage that weekend, the new bishop had a special message.
“Come to Southwest Florida and stay. So that where I am, you also may be.”
Jean Gonzalez is editor with Florida Catholic Media. This story was originally published by the Florida Catholic and distributed through a partnership with OSV News.
