Tampa Bay Times from St. Petersburg, Florida • 51

Growth of St. Petersburg diocese put heavy demands on Bishop Larkin By JEANNE PUGH Twines Religion Writer AP submit the names of three nominees to Pope John Paul II, who will make the final selection. Larkin said that the process is expected to be completed by April and that the new bishop will be installed in early June. He acknowledged that his selection as bishop was rather unusual. He was assigned to a local parish St.

Cecilia's in Clearwater when he was selected to be bishop by Pope John Paul II, who had been a classmate of Larkin's in the late 1940s when both were graduate students at the Angelicum University in Rome. Larkin was not completely green to administration, however. After earning a doctorate in sacred theology in Rome in 1949, he immediately was assigned to work in the chancery (diocesan headquarters) of the Diocese of St. Augustine. And from 1968 to 1979, while serving as pastor of St.

Cecilia's, he was the part-time officialis and vicar general (pastoral liaison officer) of the Diocese of St. Petersburg. Larkin is a native of Mount Morris, N.Y., and a graduate of St. Andrew's and St. Bernard's seminaries in nearby Rochester.

From 1951 to 1967, he served pastorates in North Miami and Jacksonville. He was named the interim administrator of the St. Petersburg diocese after the death of his predecessor, Bishop Charles McLaughlin, in 1978. Looking back on his 39 years in Florida, Larkin observed, "When I came to the state, we had one diocese St. Augustine and about 60,000 Catholics.

Now we have seven dioceses and close to a million and a half Catholics." Along with the diocese's growth in size has come a growth in services and facilities: the establishment of an Office of Communications, Catholic Media Center, Office for Black Catholics, Office for Hispanic Catholics, Office for Prison Ministry and Office for Persons with Physical Disabilities. An Office for the Elderly is expected to open in February. The diocese also has a radio station, WBVM (FM 90.5), which operates 24 hours a day from studios in Tampa. Two major educational programs have been inaugurated Please see LARKIN 10-E Pope John Paul II puts the mitre (hat) of a bishop on W. Bishop W.

Thomas Larkin of the Roman Catholic Diocese of St. Petersburg is the most soft-spoken and self-effacing of the three prominent Tampa Bay area clergy moving out of the public spotlight in 1988. But, without a doubt, he has had the most demanding job. In the first five years after his installation as bishop in 1979, Larkin saw his flock grow from about 250,000 to 338,000. In 1981, the church hierarchy gave him an assistant, Auxiliary Bishop J.

Keith Symons. But years later, Symons was elevated to bishop and made head of the Pensacola-Talla-hassee diocese. Then, in 1984, the Vatican split the St. Petersburg diocese in half and installed Bishop John Nevins to lead the new 10-county diocese centered at Venice. That reduced Larkin's diocese to five counties Pinellas, Hillsborough, Pasco, Citrus and Hernando and 255,000 church members.

Geographically and numerically, the diocese was considered to be of manageable size for one bishop. Larkin's respite was short lived, however. Since 1984, the population boom in the Tampa Bay area has brought the number of active Catholics back to above 300,000. Church demographers estimate that, at the present rate of growth, the diocese will need to establish 40 new parishes in the next 10 years, most of them in Pasco, Citrus and Hernando counties. "It has been a great 10 years, and it was pretty hard for me to make the decision to retire because I have grown to know so many good people around the diocese," Larkin said last week during an interview in his St.

Petersburg office. "But this diocese is beginning to explode. It's going to be hi by terrific growth in the next decade. It will require someone who can spend most of his time on the road, and I just don't think I'd be able to do it justice." He acknowledged that, at 66, he has some chronic health problems. His doctor has told him that they are not life-threatening but could become so if he doesn't slow down.

So, not unmindful of his friend Bishop E. Paul Haynes death last May, Thomas Larkin's head in 1979. Larkin decided to retire. He will step down about the first of June. The process of selecting his successor is well under way, Larkin said.

Letters asking for suggestions about the kind of man who would best serve the diocese have been sent to each of the Florida bishops, all of the local diocesan priests and many parish lay leaders. Opinions, along with suggestions of candidates, also are being sought from the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. fie responses to all these inquiries will be forwarded to the Washington, D.C. office of the apostolic papal nuncio, Archbishop Pio Laghi, who also serves as the Vatican ambassador to the United States. Laghi's findings, in the form of profiles ihe diocese and the ideal man for the job, will then be sent to I le Congregation of Bishops in Rome.

That office will Bishop Haynes a tireless worker for reunification of the Christian Church By JEANNE PUGH Times Religion Writer 'Ill I nati and one in Portsmouth, Ohio, before moving to Orlando in 1960 to become the canon chancellor (administrator) for the Cathedral Church of the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida. In 1965, he returned to the parish ministry as rector of St. Luke's Episcopal Church, the "mother church" of the Fort Myers area. In the next 10 years, he presided over the relocation of the parish and construction of a new complex of buildings that are described by church members today as "magnificent." He also won wider attention for his work on councils and committees at the diocesan, regional and national levels of the Episcopal Church. In 1974, he was selected for elevation to the rank of bishop and, the following year, he was installed as head of the Southwest Florida diocese, based at St.

Peter's Episcopal Cathedral in St. Petersburg. Two family tragedies overshadowed Haynes' steady rise in the church. In 1968, his younger son Roland died at the age of 24. In 1981, a sudden illness took the life of his only other son, Paul 40.

"The deaths of my brothers took a toll on both my mother and my father," Mrs. Triano said. Her mother's health has not been good since Roland's death, she said, and her father developed ulcer problems, which eventually contributed to his death. But the tragedy drew the Hayneses closer to her and her three sons, Christopher, Michael and Paul, she said. Although she and her family live in Fort Myers, they have been frequent visitors to the Haynes home in St.

Petersburg. Positive reinforcement of Haynes' minis-Please see HAYNES 10-E Mrs. Triano confirmed that her father's strong feelings about ecumenism, as well as his overt expressions of love for people of all denominations and faiths, probably had their roots in his personal history, which was tinged by both triumph and tragedy. E. Paul Haynes, as he preferred to be known, was born and grew up in southern Indiana where his father was a United Brethren minister.

He and his wife, Helen, were married as teen-agers while both were attending Indiana Central University in Indianapolis. Although at first reluctant to follow in his father's footsteps, Haynes eventually "felt the call" to the ministry and enrolled at United Theological Seminary, a Methodist-sponsored school in Dayton, Ohio. Haynes was 28 and the father of three children when he graduated in 1946 and was ordained as a United Brethren minister. Immediately after ordination, he became pastor of the largest United Brethren church in Grand Rapids, Mich. His talents as a preacher, honed during part-time stints as a circuit preacher while in the seminary, won him the job.

But Haynes' experience in the seminary had resulted in exposure to a wide spectrum of the Christian community, including the Episcopal Church. "He had come to love the rituals, the liturgy, the traditions and the doctrine of the sacramental church," Mrs. Triano said. "So he felt that the honest thing to do was to change denominations." He resigned as pastor of the Grand Rapids church in 1947 and, two years later, after additional studies under the supervision of Episcopal authorities, was ordained an Episcopal priest. He served two parishes in Cincin Emerson Paul Haynes was a big man, much given to grandiose gestures and ceremony, who reveled in his role as bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Southwest Florida.

From a distance, he may have appeared at times to be somewhat pompous and autocratic; but to those who knew him well, "he was a gentle, polite teddy bear," says the Rev. Emmet C. Smith, retired former rector of St. Giles' Parish in Pinellas Park. Father Smith's wife Joyce, former editor of the Southern Cross, the diocesan newspaper, adds: "He was so soft-hearted that sometimes you hesitated to ask favors of him because you knew he would say 'yes' even when he probably shouldn't." The Smiths were longtime friends of the bishop, having known him during the early years of his ministry in southern Ohio, as well as during the 13 years he led the local diocese.

His death at age 70 on May 30 came unexpectedly from complications after ulcer surgery. Haynes, Mrs. Smith said this week, did not relish the notion of retirement and had only reluctantly set 1990 as the time when he would step down. "He loved being a bishop," she said. "He treated the whole diocese as his extended family.

He wanted to gather everyone into his big, open arms." She thinks it was Haynes' love for all people that led him to become one of the area's strongest supporters of ecumenism. "He wanted to bring everyone into the fold," she said. Haynes' daughter Rosalind Triano agrees. She described her late father as "a relaxed, if If5 tJ Times photo Bishop Haynes "wanted to bring everyone into the fold." loving, tender man who found it easy to say, 'I love you' the most forgiving man I've ever known he never harbored bad feelings, and he trusted everyone." ST. PETERSBURG TIMES SATURDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1988 7E.