Earl Alfred Boyea Jr never wanted to be a bishop. ‘No, I did not,’ he says with a wry smile, recalling the day his modest ambitions were overturned. It was Sunday, July 14, 2002.
‘I was up north visiting my parents. I was on a break from seminary work when my bishop, Cardinal Maida of Detroit, called me on the phone. I first thought, “Okay, what did I do now?” but instead he said: “The Holy Father has named you a bishop. Do you accept?” Well, I did not know you could say “no”!’
And so Mgr Earl Boyea, rector of the Pontifical College Josephinum in Ohio, became an auxiliary bishop of Detroit in Michigan and then, six years later, bishop of the neighbouring Diocese of Lansing.
