Your Eminence, Your Excellency, Your Grace, My brother bishops, priests and deacons, reverend guests from other churches and political representatives, my dear brothers and sisters.

In giving thanks to God for my ordination as Bishop, I also wish to thank you all for your presence and prayerful participation in this evening’s liturgy, and also to all those who have accompanied us in spirit and prayer in many parts of the world. I pray that God’s Holy Spirit will guide and protect me in the apostolic ministry, which I am privileged to have been chosen for.

I am conscious of the love and support of the people of the Diocese of Argyll & The Isles, and I therefore pledge my life in service of the Catholic community in this beautiful, if stormy, part of Scotland, hoping to encourage us all to recognise each other’s needs and that of our neighbours, those close by and those further afield whose poverty and pain are made known to us. Life is not always easy in this part of the world, but we have learnt over the centuries that the Christian faith strengthens and inspires us to feel for one another and to turn to God in good times and bad, offering Him our worship and love through Our Saviour, the Lord Jesus.

I am conscious that many Gaidhlig speaking island communities form part of the Diocese and I would like to address a few words to you in my rather limited Gaidhlig:     
                                                                            
‘S ann an Uibhist a deas a thoisich mi nam shagart, agus bho’n uairsin chuir mi seachad moran bhliadhnachan ann am paraisdean eile Uibhist cuideachd.

Thug na bliadhnachan sin dhomh eòlas agus mios mor air creideamh domhain agus sonruichte nan eileanan.

Comhla ribh a nis mar Easbuig, feumaidh sinn an creideamh priosail sin a bhrosnachadh as ùr – feumaidh sinn a thoirt seachad gu dileas dha’n oigridh tha fàs suas.

Dia ga’r beannachadh uile, agus bitheamh a cuimhneachadh orm na’r n’urnaigh.

A special thank you is due to those who have worked so hard preparing today’s liturgy – Canon Donald MacKay and the Cathedral parishioners, and Fr Michael Hutson and the Diocesan Choir. It has been a beautiful occasion enriched by such further preparation and by all who have participated today in a special way in the ordination rite and Eucharist.

Although we have our own traditions out here in the west we are very much part of Scotland and of the Catholic community in Scotland. I thank Cardinal O’Brien, the other bishops and priests, religious and laity from across the country, our friends from other churches, and representatives from public life for joining us today, and I pray that as a living community of faith we may give a strong witness to the Gospel of life and love across our land and so encourage others to faith in Christ Jesus.

 I thank the Bishops from England and Ireland who have travelled to be with us today – Bishop Roche of Leeds and Bishop Duffy of Clogher. Bishop Duffy comes from the same area of County Monaghan from which the Toal family left Ireland for the Scottish Highlands about 80 years ago. Some of our relatives from Ireland have managed to be with us today also and it is lovely to welcome them also to Oban.

 I have spent a good part of my life in Spain – first as a seminarian in Valladolid and over the last nine years as a member of staff in the Royal Scots College in Salamanca. Some of my friends from Spain have managed to come today, and I thank them for the effort they have made in doing so –

muchas gracias por vuestra presencia en esta misa de ordenación en la Fiesta de la Inmaculada, tan apreciada en España. Y gracias también a Vd. Don Faustino, nuestro nuncio apostólico.

In thanking Archbishop Faustino Saínz Muñoz, the Apostolic Nuncio to the United Kingdom, for his presence, we the people of the Diocese of Argyll & The Isles, like Catholics everywhere, acknowledge our communion with the Bishop of Rome and sense the love the universal church has for us, a small but ancient diocese, in which the Catholic faith has survived despite trials and isolation.

I have been blessed to be a member of a large family and all of them are here today and many relatives also. On such an occasion I remember with gratitude my deceased father, Pat, and my mother Mary and my brothers and sisters and their families especially. My mother has a reputation for coming to the Cathedral for diocesan events, especially the Mass of Chrism and the annual Vocations Mass – hopefully she will be able to keep this up in the future, and she might be invited to stay the night now from time to time!

We come from Roy Bridge, an area, a parish, which has produced a number of priests, and indeed bishops, for the Scottish mission, and we would also claim as our own Blessed Mary MacKillop, who hopefully will soon be Australia’s first canonized saint. It is a proud legacy we carry but one we, and indeed all the faithful across the Highland towns and glens and the Western Islands, need to live up to in our own time so that our faith may be passed on and loved by future generations.

In this regard we look to Mary our Mother, on this her feast day and pray that she will help us to turn our eyes towards the face of Jesus, and there find the Good Shepherd, who never leaves his flock untended, inviting each one of us to respond in our hearts to his call and to offer our lives in love and service of him.