I had the early Mass this morning after a fitful night of attempted sleep. We are in the time of year where my sinuses drive me nuts from the shifting weather and my eyes itch like mad from hay fever season.
After the early Mass, Deacon Joe and I went to our weekly breakfast at Sophia’s. Always a good breakfast there.
My “day off” should have started there. However, I had to go to the Pastoral Center today to meet the audit team. Every three years, each diocese is audited for Safe Environment policies and practices. I was lucky enough to have our year fall while I am the administrator of the diocese. Although, that is also my get out of jail free card. I can legitimately tell them that I just got here at the end of June and have no real knowledge of what has transpired.
No, seriously, I was brought up to date over the past two months so that we can inform the auditors of all that the diocese and its parishes and schools are doing in order to maintain safe environments for our children and our parishioners. This is a very serious matter and, as we hear on the news on a regular basis, still a timely matter.
After meeting with the auditors, I came back to the parish for our weekly staff meeting between our school president, school principal, the associate pastor, and myself. We go out to lunch to meet so that we are not distracted at the building. The meetings generally cover the next week as well as give us an opportunity to discuss anything that may have come up this week or the week prior. We are blessed to have such energetic and dedicated people on our staff. That goes for all of our employees. They are wonderful in my book!
The rest of the day was spent doing as little as possible. I have been looking around for phones. My present phone, a Samsung Galaxy 7, is beginning to fail me. There are times that it drops a call and the only thing I can do to connect to anyone after that is restart the phone. I think it’s telling me that it’s time to shop around for a replacement. Therefore, I’ve been looking around at the present new smartphones. I settled on a Samsung Galaxy 10e.
The nice thing is that I have an even nice set of cameras on the new phone to take with me when I go to Rome in December to meet with the pope. Can you say “selfie”.
