An elderly Italian bishop is retiring early in order to become an evangelist.
Bishop Gianfranco Todisco, 71, doesn't see his role as head of the Melfi-Rapolla-Venosa diocese in Basilicata, southern Italy, as fulfilling his evangelistic calling. So he is giving up the role to move overseas. His request to leave early, before the mandatory retirement age of 75, was granted by the Vatican last week.
Pope Francis praised Todisco and called him personally in December to ask if he still wanted to go after the bishop wrote to the Vatican about his decision last year, according to Crux Now.
Explaining his decision, Todisco told his parishioners: 'Someone might think that behind my desire to return to being a missionary there is another hidden motivation linked to difficulties, dissatisfaction or a desire for a "change of air".'
'It is none of that,' he wrote in a letter on the diocese website.
He said he had only accepted the post as bishop because he saw his 'superiors' decisions as the will of God' but has now decided to focus on his own calling as a missionary.
He told Pope Francis: 'I am ready to go anywhere you think I should be sent, even to the furthest and poorest parishes to the 'peripheries' of the church that you remind us not to neglect.'
It comes after the pontiff has repeatedly spoken about the need for a 'missionary church' that takes the Catholic message out around the world.
The Church's evangelism network is looking expand with new churches and communities in 'missionary' territories outside the traditional heartlands of Europe and America.
