News of Cardinal Brislin’s Transfer from Cape Town “left us with heavy hearts”: Auxiliary Bishop in South Africa

The South African member of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate (OMI) challenged the people of God in Cape Town Archdiocese to find ways of making “the transition more meaningful for our local Church, for me personally, for the Cardinal, and also for his successor.”

In working towards a meaningful transition, Bishop Sylvester said, “we will do well to remember that a liminal space is not the same as a vacuum. It is a vibrant space calling us to rise above self and to embrace a new reality.”

The transfer provides an opportunity for the people of God in Cape Town Archdiocese to examine their spirituality in the face of transition, he went on to say and cited the agony of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and the restlessness that characterized the experience as an example of the reality of a transitional process.

There is need to “embrace the restlessness that is natural to this time of transition,” the Auxiliary Bishop of Cape Town Archdiocese since his Episcopal Consecration in August 2019 said.

“This is a rather difficult time – we are literally in-between times during this transition. We will experience restlessness. That is natural. There is after all a season for everything,” he said referring to the book of Ecclesiastes.

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Bishop Sylvester continued, “We often think of the calm nature of prayer and at times even use calming music during our meditation times but restlessness, helplessness, and even despair ought to be natural to our spirituality simply because these aspects are inescapable and necessary parts of our human existence.”

In a video posted on YouTube on November 8, Cardinal Brislin weighed in on his appointment to succeed Archbishop Buti Joseph Tlhagale as Local Ordinary of the Metropolitan See that is headquartered in South Africa’s biggest city and the capital of the country’s Gauteng province, Johannesburg.

“I’ve come to know the Priests, Deacons, Religious, and the people of Cape Town Archdiocese very well, and it will be painful to leave them,” Cardinal Brislin said about the people of God he shepherded since February 2010, following his transfer from South Africa’s Kroonstad Diocese, where he started his Episcopal Ministry in January 2007.

“I owe them so much; they have given me such great spiritual support, and I will truly miss them,” he said. 

In the video recording, the 68-year-old South African Cardinal expressed his readiness for the Papal transfer from Cape Town Archdiocese, adding that he hopes to get the support he needs from the people of God in Johannesburg Archdiocese.