When Pope Francis told the Congregation of Bishops in February that the Church needs better bishops he was laying out a challenge for all Christians, McGrattan told The Catholic Register as he prepared to take over from the retiring Bishop Nicola De Angelis.

“There’s a challenge for every Christian to basically strive to be an example of Christ in whatever vocation,” said McGrattan. “But especially in the role of bishop and shepherd.”

Unity, reconciliation, teaching, tradition and the future are the special responsibility of bishops and they aren’t easy tasks, said McGrattan.

“I think what he (Pope Francis) is saying is that he wants us as bishops to recognize these inherent responsibilities, to acknowledge our limitations but at the same time to have the courage to face them. So that’s what he wants in a bishop,” McGrattan said.

As a former seminary professor and rector at St. Peter’s Seminary in London, Ont., who was ordained a bishop in 2010, McGrattan believes encouraging young men to take up a call to the priesthood is job one for bishops.

“Every diocese has the potential for vocations,” he said. “It’s important that we do promote that call, that sense of service to the local Church. It’s done with the examples of families, of parishes and of priests. It also has to be in the forefront of the ministry of the bishop.”

After four years working with Toronto’s ethnic and downtown parishes, he will take possession of a diocese that hosts a vast stretch of cottage country, a thriving dairy farm industry and one of Canada’s most idyllic small cities. The diocese has a population of nearly half a million, more than 10 per cent of them Catholic. There are 36 parishes with resident priests, 24 missions and two summer chapels.

The diocesan web site lists 97 clergy, including deacons and retired priests. Since his own move from auxiliary bishop in Toronto to bishop of Peterborough, De Angelis, a former missionary in Africa, has appointed a number of African priests to pastoral positions in the diocese.

In 2002, De Angelis took over a troubled diocese, $14 million in debt and with several sexual abuse court cases pending. De Angelis, 75, hands over a diocese nearly debt free and with a changed culture in regard to sexual abuse.

“I know that Bishop De Angelis has done an exemplary job, facing the issue of some of the sexual abuse and the lawsuits facing the diocese. And it has been a sacrifice for him and for the priests and the laity, but in justice. Hopefully it has been for the victims of abuse a sense of commitment and an act of justice and mercy on the part of the Church toward them,” said McGrattan.

Working in Toronto, McGrattan has spent as much time as he could in parishes. It’s a modus operandi he plans to continue in Peterborough.

“I have tried to make it a focus,” he said. “I see it as a way to keep in touch with the local Church through parish visits. It’s also a time to see the ministry of priests and to support them. But also to see the good works of the laity. Many of them are very devoted and very committed to their parish. It’s been edifying to see some of the work they do.”

McGrattan also inherits De Angelis’s ambition to create a Catholic liberal arts college for undergraduate students at Sacred Heart parish. Accreditation is still about a year away, but courses that count toward a degree at Trent University are already being offered.

It’s a vision McGrattan buys into.

“(De Angelis’s) desire to look to the youth and try to form a Catholic college, I think is a desire and a vision that most people would have. The youth have a need to be educated and to be formed in the Catholic faith. That’s a challenge,” said McGrattan.

The  one-time unhappy chemical engineer who found happiness in the priesthood wants to take on his new role out of a sense of obedience, “obedience in the proper sense of listening for the will of God expressed in those who have a certain care for the Church,” he said.

At 57, McGrattan looks forward to almost 20 more years of ministry as a bishop.

“When we place it in the hands of God we can begin to see that there’s a sense of the path that He wants us to take,” he said.