Auxiliary bishop, 75, retires from active ministry but will continue to serve archdiocese

WESTLAND — Bishop Francis R. Reiss has retired. Sort of.

The Detroit native and auxiliary bishop celebrated his 75th birthday Nov. 11, the age at which bishops around the world are required by canon law to submit their resignations to the pope. He did; and it was accepted.

And the work continues.

Bishop Reiss, who has served the Archdiocese of Detroit as an auxiliary bishop since 2003, will continue in his current pastoral roles for the foreseeable future, he told The Michigan Catholic and the Catholic Television Network of Detroit.

“I’ve spoken with the archbishop, and I’ve indicated that I want to make myself as available as I can, depending on my health, of course,” Bishop Reiss said. “I will continue to do confirmations, and I’ll continue to work as regional moderator for the South Region until some other arrangement might be made, and that’s about it.”

While “some other arrangement” could be a new auxiliary bishop at some point for Detroit — which historically has had up to four — that decision is known only to Pope Francis. In the meantime, Bishop Reiss is looking forward to continuing to assist Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron in serving the faithful he’s known for nearly 50 years.

A passion for teaching

“I was ordained (to the priesthood) in 1966, and I was in a parish with a couple thousand families and a grade school, and I ran around wearing a cassock all day long,” Bishop Reiss recalled. “I had a wonderful pastor, a very saintly man, Msgr. Merwin Lenk, and I never would have dreamt that the changes in the Church that have happened could have happened.”

Recalling his early days in ministry at St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Detroit, then-Fr. Reiss “would have been happy to be an associate pastor for the rest of my life,” he said.

For an eventual successor of the apostles whose original plan was to join a teaching order of Franciscans in Brooklyn, N.Y., Bishop Reiss said he chuckles when he’s asked by schoolchildren, “What do you have to do to become a bishop?”

“It wasn’t something I was looking for or anything of that nature,” he said about the day he was called “out of the blue” to see Cardinal Adam J. Maida in July 2003. Then the pastor of St. Frances Cabrini Parish in Allen Park, he worried his visit with the cardinal was a result of a disgruntled parishioner who wanted to “get rid of Reiss,” he said. Instead, he was informed Pope John Paul II wanted to make him auxiliary bishop of Detroit.

“So that’s what I tell the children. It’s not a career move; it’s humbling,” he said. “You always think of a dozen more people who are more qualified than you to have that position, but God uses weak servants to do His will.”

A teacher at heart, Bishop Reiss said his vocation to the priesthood and later episcopacy didn’t derail his goals of teaching.

“It’s interesting, I’ve never been in an assignment where I haven’t been able to either teach or have a school,” said the bishop, whose posts included serving as dean of admissions and dean of academics at Sacred Heart Seminary, director of the archdiocesan Department of Education and as campus minister at the University of Michigan and Henry Ford Community College. “In a sense, I have been a teacher, and a priest as well.”

Bishop Reiss includes among the highlights of his episcopacy celebrating the sacraments with children, especially confirmations and first Communions.

“Doing confirmations is the happiest task a bishop has, because you see there the fresh face of these young men and women,” he said. “I can’t say that all the time, but they want to learn. They want to know more about Jesus, they want to know more about how they can live the way Jesus wants them to live. For me, it’s a great joy.”

Changing the culture

Young people today, he said, including those discerning a call to the priesthood, are bombarded by a materialistic culture that often doesn’t place much emphasis on Jesus. Because of that, it’s more important than ever for parents — and the Church at large — to encourage young people to develop the motivation to learn more about God’s love.

“You’ve heard that charity begins at home? Well, evangelization begins at home,” said Bishop Reiss, adding the “climate has changed” since his own Catholic upbringing in a strong Polish community.

Bishop Reiss praised efforts led by Archbishop Vigneron to bring a missionary mindset back to the Archdiocese of Detroit, including a synod on evangelization in late 2016. Similar to the last archdiocesan synod in 1969, which opened up new avenues for lay participation in parish life, Bishop Reiss said the goal of the 2016 synod will be a “paradigm shift” in thinking about evangelization.

“We’re building on that structural change to a change in concept and change in the motivation for what we’re doing, that motivation being only Jesus as Lord and as head of the Church,” he said. “It’s going to call for a lot of not having a personal agenda. When you come close to Jesus, it’s not what you want that’s important, it’s what he wants.”

Forward with confidence

Bishop Reiss, a canon lawyer, cited Pope Francis’ recent changes to annulment proceedings and the Jubilee of Mercy as examples of the Church thinking about its mission from a more pastoral perspective.

“I always see law as not restrictive, but protective,” said the bishop, who holds three master’s degrees and a licentiate in canon law from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. “That’s where we’re moving: to preserve the faith and all the wonderful gifts God gives us.”

Bishop Reiss said he’s also observed the Church making great strides in the way it relates to those outside the Catholic faith as co-chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic

Bishops’ Midwest Muslim-Catholic Dialogue for the past 10 years.



Such dialogues have helped immensely in enabling members of both religions to cooperate on areas of agreement, the bishop said, such as taking strong stands against religious-based violence.

“I’ve found that especially in the United States, that dialogue is extremely important because the Muslim population in the United States is a population that experiences freedom,” Bishop Reiss said. “They operate within that freedom, and they have made some very strong statements against terrorism, indicating that in their appreciation of the Muslim religion, that is not the core teaching.”

Not everything about being a bishop has been rosy, he admitted, and pastoral challenges do arise. But just as for anyone, faith in God is key to overcoming any trial.

As for what the future holds, Bishop Reiss stands by his approach of taking things day by day.

“As I saw the world change in the almost 50 years I’ve been a priest and the 12 years I’ve been a bishop, we never know what the future is going to hold,” he said. “If we can make that act of faith that Jesus will never leave us, that he will be with us until the end of time, we can move forward with confidence.”

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See the interview

A half-hour interview with Bishop Reiss will be broadcast on the Catholic Television Network of Detroit at the following times:

• Monday, Nov. 30 at 1:30 p.m.


• Tuesday, Dec. 1 at 4:30 p.m.


• Thursday, Dec. 3 at 11 a.m.

Bishop Francis R. Reiss

Born: Nov. 11, 1940 (Detroit)

Ordained Detroit Priest: June 4, 1966

Appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Detroit: July 7, 2003

Ordained Auxiliary Bishop: Aug. 12, 2003