The newly appointed Catholic Bishop of Townsville, which includes North West Queensland, says he can’t wait to get into the job.
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Fr Tim Harris, currently the parish priest of Surfers Paradise, is set to be confirmed bishop on Wednesday May 3 with a service starting at 10.30am in Emmaus Hall at Ryan Catholic College in Kirwan, Townville because of the numbers of people expected to attend the ordination.
“They are expecting thousands of people, and I’m blown away by that,” Fr Tim said.
“They’ve been three years waiting for this.”
Fr Tim, now 54 years old, brings a distinguished church background to the role which has been vacant since the 2014 death of Bishop Michael Putney.
“I left Nudgee College in 1980 and at that stage I had a bit of a feeling I may want to become a priest,” he said.
“I let it go for a while and went into the bank of New South Wales and I ended up in their public relations department in their head office in Brisbane, I loved PR.”
After five years with the bank the calling to the priesthood was still there.
“I felt it could not be suppressed any longer so I went and told my local parish priest Fr Brian Heenan, who ended up as Bishop Brian Heenan of Rockhampton, and I guess you could say the rest was history,” he said.
Fr Tim entered the seminary in 1986, ordained as a deacon in 1992 and as a priest later the same year.
“Ironically my first appointment as deacon was to Surfer’s Paradise and I ended up back there many years later as the parish priest,” he said.
“I celebrate 25 years as a priest this year and little did I know something extraordinary was going to happen, to be asked to be bishop of Townsville.”
When asked what he thought the role of a bishop was in the 21st century, Fr Tim had no hesitation is nominating the role of “unifier”.
“He is ordained to service and offer episcopal ministry, a special ministry set aside for only a few, but he needs to be a sign of unity,” he said.
“It’s not about power but a very specific service.”
Fr Tim said he wanted to contact all his priests before ordination.
“It’s very important for them to know the chief shepherd of the diocese is concerned about them and wants to make sure they are okay,” he said.
Fr Tim acknowledged the challenges of looking after a diocese from the coast to the NT border of over 425,000 square kilometres.
“This is one of my biggest challenge when the number of priests are spread very thin: how are we going to keep the Catholic community fed with the celebration of Eucharist?” he said.