Fledgling is a relative term, of course. The Companions of the Cross was founded in 1985 by the late Fr. Bob Bedard. Twenty-nine years later the order’s 37 priests and lay ministries serve in 10 parishes and three universities. So the Companions have been making a difference for a while now, yet their story is a mere blip measured in Church years.

That short history is what makes Riesbeck’s episcopal ordination as an auxiliary in Ottawa particularly noteworthy. The General Superior of the order, Fr. Scott McCaig, said the ordination marks a coming of age for the Companions. “We’re getting a little older,” he said.

For sure the ordination recognizes Riesbeck’s spiritual attributes and physical abilities, but it is more than that. It is Vatican affirmation of Bedard’s 1985 vision of an order or priests that would help propel Church renewal through evangelization.

“The Catholic Church does many, many things well, but one thing we don’t do at all well is to evangelize,” Bedard once said. “We really have forgotten how. Yet it is the Church’s number one ministry. Churches that evangelize well are growing. Those that don’t are in decline. We’re falling behind.”

Bedard died two years before Pope Francis published his apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (Joy of the Gospel). But the two men were clearly in sync. The Pope said evangelization and living the Gospel must be placed at the heart of the Church’s mission. This has been a consistent teaching of Francis. All Catholics, clergy and laity, are called to become active disciples and fully engaged in evangelization, he said.

That same principle was poured like a concrete foundation upon which Bedard raised the Companions of the Cross. Like the Pope, Bedard consistently preached evangelization with language that was plain, concise, sincere and often humourous. He was a pioneer of new evangelization even before he became a mentor to the Companions’ future bishop.

“He taught us, his spiritual sons, to radically surrender our lives to the Lord and to pray: ‘Lord, whatever you ask of me I will do,’ ” Riesbeck said.

The day after the Pope announced that Riesbeck was to become a bishop, the bishop-elect chose his episcopal motto: “Evangelii Gaudium, the joy of the Gospel.” Those words will adorn his personal coat of arms as a tribute to Pope Francis and in memorial to the vision of Fr. Bob Bedard in launching the Companions of the Cross.