Happy birthday to Willem Jacobus Cardinal Eijk, who today marks his 60th birthday.
Cardinal Eijk was born in Duivendrecht, Diocese of Haarlem, and became a priest of the Diocese of Roermond, then Bishop of Groningen-Leeuwarden and is now the Archbishop of Utrecht. He was elevated to the College of Cardinals in 2012.
After a string of new appointments, news from Passau reports the passing of Bishop Franz Xaver Eder, bishop emeritus of that diocese, on Thursday. Bishop Eder was 87, and died from a heart failure. He spent his final weeks in a Passau hospital. The diocesan website reports that he passed away “well-prepared after having received the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick”.
Bishop Eder was bishop of Passau from 1984 to 2001, after having served as its auxiliary and coadjutor since 1977. He has been lying in state since yesterday in the chapel of St. Lambert of Passau’s St. Stephen’s Cathedral. His funeral Mass is planned for Tuesday and will be led by the retired archbishop of München und Freising, Friedrich Cardinal Wetter.
“God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but the Spirit of power and love and self-control,” from the Second Letter to Timothy (1:7) was Bishop Eder’s motto, and “that is how he knew himself to be sent to the people,” Bishop Wilhem Schraml, apostolic administrator of Passau, said in a first reaction.
It was Bishop Eder’s wish that little be spent of wreaths and the like, but that donations be made to a fund he established to aid children and families in need.
The Diocese of Passau itself awaits the appointment of a new ordinary, as Bishop Wilhelm Schraml retired in October.
Photo credit: Dionys Asenkerschbaumer
In Caelo et in Terra 