Letter 23: To my brother in Christ,

To my brother in Christ, You write about the difficulty of visiting all the churches in your care, and I recognize the complaint because I live it. Zaragoza is not a small diocese, and the roads are not what they were. In the years when the seasons are wet, some of the outlying communities are effectively unreachable for months at a time, and I am aware that this means they are also unreachable by proper pastoral oversight. The only answer I have found — imperfect as it is — is to cultivate reliable priests in those communities and to trust them to do the work that I cannot supervise directly. This requires choosing those priests carefully, which requires having enough candidates to choose from, which requires an investment in the education and formation of the clergy that takes years to show results. There is no quick solution. I also make a point of writing to the priests in outlying areas more frequently than the minimum canonical requirement. A letter is not a visit, but it is something. It maintains the relationship, conveys that they have not been forgotten, and gives them a channel for raising problems before the problems become crises. The pastoral visitation that we both know is required — the full episcopal visitation with formal inspection of accounts and canonical procedures — I manage about once every two years for the more distant parishes. I know this is not enough. I know of no bishop who manages better. Your brother in the same struggle, Braulio