Bishop

A Roman Catholic bishop holds the fullness of the sacrament of Holy Orders, a theological claim distinguishing the episcopate from the priesthood as a difference of degree within one sacrament rather than a separate rite; only a bishop can validly ordain new priests and deacons or consecrate other bishops. Within his diocese, a bishop is described in canon law as its proper pastor, holding ordinary, proper and immediate authority for governing, teaching and sanctifying the local church, subject to the Pope's own universal authority and, on questions of doctrine, to the wider college of bishops acting in communion with him.

The Second Vatican Council, 1962 to 1965, placed particular emphasis on episcopal collegiality, the teaching that all bishops together, in union with and never apart from the Pope, share responsibility for the whole Church, a principle given institutional expression through instruments such as the Synod of Bishops and national bishops' conferences that did not exist in their modern form before the Council. A bishop is assisted in diocesan governance by a curia of appointed officials, and larger dioceses may have one or more auxiliary or coadjutor bishops sharing specific responsibilities or preparing to succeed the diocesan bishop directly.

Catholic theology holds that bishops stand in unbroken succession from the apostles, apostolic succession, understood as guaranteeing the continuity of the Church's teaching authority and sacramental validity across two thousand years; tracing an individual bishop's own consecration lineage back through named predecessors is a genre of ecclesiastical record-keeping with genuine historical depth, though gaps and uncertainties exist for some medieval lines. A candidate is ordained a bishop by at least one, and normatively three, already-consecrated bishops, a plurality intended partly to demonstrate collegial consent to the new bishop's entry into the episcopal college and partly, historically, as a safeguard of validity in an era before centralized documentation could otherwise confirm it.

Episcopal appointment today follows a process centered on the Congregation for Bishops in Rome, which reviews candidates proposed through consultation involving the local papal nuncio, existing bishops of the province and, less formally, other clergy and laity, before the Pope makes the final appointment; the practice contrasts with earlier centuries in which secular rulers, cathedral chapters or local nobility often held decisive influence over episcopal selection, a tension, the investiture controversy of the eleventh and twelfth centuries being its sharpest medieval expression, that shaped much of the relationship between the papacy and European states.