Springfield, Ill., Oct 24, 2019 / 18:01 pm
The role of president in a bishops' conference is not as powerful as one may assume, Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield in Illinois told CNA Wednesday.
"It's important to understand that the bishops' conference is not some kind of a regulatory body or a supervisory body," Paprocki told CNA Oct. 23.
The conference, in fact, "doesn't have any authority over bishops in their own diocese."
While it would be easy to draw comparisons between the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the United States Congress, Paprocki said that this was not at all the proper analogy for a bishops' conference.