I’m mourning the imminent departure of a dear bishop, Donal Wuerl, whom Pope Benedict has just named as archbishop-designate of Washington, D.C. Bishop Wuerl has been a great father to me, my family, and my neighbors. He’s been my bishop for most of my adult life.

Our nation’s capital, though, has gained a capital patrologist. Something in my memory tells me that young Donald Wuerl studied under Johannes Quasten at Catholic University of America. In the early 1980s, as Msgr. Wuerl, he wrote a lovely introduction to patristics, aptly titled Fathers of the Church. His catechism, The Teaching of Christ, co-authored with the great patrologist Thomas Comerford Lawler, is a model for integration of the Fathers in modern catechesis. A few years ago, in an interview in Pittsburgh’s diocesan paper, Bishop Wuerl let slip that the Church Fathers remain his favored spiritual reading.

May he prosper in his new home. Rejoice, all you lands of the Beltway.