Bishop Thomas Dupre of Springfield, Mass., has abruptly retired as of today. Dupre had been saying for a while that he’s been suffering from a variety of ailments and wanted to retire, but it’s still a bit sudden. He’s also been under quite a bit of fire because of the Scandal, mainly because of the Lavigne case, where a now laicized priest is a suspect in the murder of an altar boy.
Of the four dioceses in Massachusetts, 3 have now had a change in bishops in the past two years, with the fourth’s bishop now over retirement age. And the other three bishops moved on before retirement age. (Of course, O’Malley was moved from Fall River to Florida and then back to Boston, so that’s different.) Once Bishop Dan Reilly of Worcester is allowed to move into retirement, we will have had an entire changeover.
