Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Fa­ther Joseph Ever­ard Har­ris has been ap­point­ed Coad­ju­tor Arch­bish­op of the Arch­dio­cese of Port-of-Spain. Har­ris' ap­point­ment was of­fi­cial­ly an­nounced by Pope Bene­dict XVI in Rome ear­ly yes­ter­day.

Har­ris, 69, will be this coun­try's 10th arch­bish­op re­plac­ing Arch­bish­op Ed­ward Gilbert on De­cem­ber 26.

The Pope al­so an­nounced Mon­sign­or Ja­son Gor­don as Bish­op of the Dio­cese of Bridgetown, Bar­ba­dos, and Kingstown in St Vin­cent. Har­ris will be or­dained on Sep­tem­ber 14 at the Cathe­dral of Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion while Gor­don, 52, will be or­dained on Sep­tem­ber 21 in the Cathe­dral of St Patrick in Bar­ba­dos, fol­lowed by his in­stal­la­tion at the Cathe­dral of As­sump­tion in the Dio­cese of Kingstown.

Har­ris said he in­tend­ed to know and un­der­stand the arch­dio­cese and its priest "in a deep­er way," find the best way to move the Church for­ward and re­vi­talise Catholic cul­ture and iden­ti­ty-the sec­ond pri­or­i­ty of the Syn­od. A me­dia con­fer­ence was held yes­ter­day to in­tro­duce Har­ris and Gor­don at Arch­bish­op's House in Port-of-Spain. De­scrib­ing how he felt when asked to lead the Church, Har­ris said he felt some­thing in his stom­ach. "I felt the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty that was be­ing placed up­on me," he said."I won­dered whether I was up to it but then, I have been taught that you have to trust that God knows what God wants and you have to trust that God's spir­it will be with you."

Har­ris said he said "yes" with the hope in­side of him that he will al­ways main­tain close con­tact with the Holy Spir­it who will help and guide him. Har­ris said Gilbert was leav­ing the arch­dio­cese in "a good state."

He said he was not giv­en "a can of worms," but an arch­dio­cese which was mov­ing for­ward. "I in­tend to lis­ten a lot, di­a­logue with the priests, the lay peo­ple and move for­ward to­geth­er to en­sure that we can make and en­sure that our Catholic cul­ture and iden­ti­ty are re­vi­talised," Har­ris said. Gor­don said the life of a bish­op had changed from 50 years ago. "The plu­ral­i­ty in the Church is no se­cret," he said. "It is a fam­i­ly and in every fam­i­ly, you will have things that you agree up­on and things that we dis­agree up­on, but in this fam­i­ly, the role of the bish­op is to hold this fam­i­ly in uni­ty and love every part of it and to give it space to flour­ish."

Gilbert said it was very rare that lo­cal peo­ple were al­so the bish­op of the dio­cese. "The word lo­cal is per­fect­ly un­der­stand­able," he said. "It was an is­sue for many peo­ple, I am sure, but my cri­te­ria was-rec­om­mend good peo­ple and I did. "The fact that they were lo­cal was a bonus for peo­ple who were look­ing for lo­cals."

Mas band non-is­sue for Pope

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions about Har­ris and Gor­don's in­volve­ment in the pro­duc­tion of a mas band for Car­ni­val ear­li­er this year, Gilbert said they felt it was nec­es­sary to find a way to be­gin to make in­roads in­to Car­ni­val cul­ture. Gilbert said it was a non-is­sue for the Vat­i­can. "In fact, I'm sure they haven't even heard of a Car­ni­val band," he said. Asked whether the Vat­i­can would ac­cept the Car­ni­val band con­cept if he were in­formed, Gilbert re­spond­ed: "He is a very in­tel­li­gent man and he is very in­ter­est­ed in re-evan­ge­lis­ing the Catholic cul­ture through­out the world, so I would guess and that's all I can do...my guess would be that once you ex­plain it to him, he would be in favour of it." Har­ris said while Car­ni­val was part of the cul­ture, there were more im­por­tant mat­ters on the ta­ble. Mean­while, Gilbert, 75, said he had grown used to the warm weath­er in T&T and was re­turn­ing to Flori­da where he hoped to con­tin­ue God's work and play golf since he was in good health. He spent ten years in T&T.