WCC Congratulates Archbishop Paul Coakley on Election as Next USCCB President
The Wyoming Catholic College community is pleased to congratulate Archbishop Paul Coakley on his recent election as President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
“Archbishop Coakley is a wonderful example of what we all hope for in our church leadership,” says Fr. Dcn. Kyle Washut, the College’s president. “The fact that he accepted the call to serve ‘in faith and with great hope’ and by asking for prayers from his fellow bishops and from his flock shows what sort of bishop (and man) he is, and I’m glad to see him take on the roll. Selfishly, I worry he’ll have harder time coming to my advisory council meetings, but the Church will be the richer for his presence in the presidential seat.”
A long-time friend and supporter of the College and a member of her Presidential Advisory Board, Archbishop Coakley has ties that go back even farther than the College’s founding, all the way back to his youthful presence in the University of Kansas’s Integrated Humanities Program (IHP), an extraordinary Great Books program created, in part, by Dr. John Senior, whose writings on education and on the importance of Catholic culture were fundamental to WCC’s founding. (The College’s “Philosophical Vision Statement,” written by Dr. Bob Carlson, the College’s Founding Dean and an IHP graduate himself, was profoundly influenced by Senior’s thought. Carlson’s book on his experiences with the IHO, “Truth on Trial: The Rise and Fall of the Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas,” is being reprinted in partnership with Wyoming Catholic College, CUA’s Catholic Education Press, and Adeodatus’s Series on Catholic Education and Culture. It will be available in February.)
In the Fall of 2009, Archbishop Coakley, then Bishop of Salina, KS, visited Wyoming Catholic, during which time he blessed the newly-acquired American Legion building that was the College’s first acquisition in downtown Lander. It was renamed Frasatti Hall, and has served as the College’s cafeteria ever since.
