Former baseball teammates to share new link as fellow bishops

Published: 2008-05-07

SALINA, Kan. (CNS) -- Playing baseball together that summer of 1968, Paul Coakley and James Conley could never have dreamed that, four decades later, they both would be bishops in the Catholic Church. That their lives have run such a parallel course since their childhood days continues to amaze Bishop Coakley, who has headed the Salina Diocese since 2004. Bishop Coakley will be a co-consecrator at the episcopal ordination of Bishop-designate Conley, named an auxiliary bishop of Denver April 10, in the Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Denver May 30. "Our paths have run parallel to one another's for 30 years or more," Bishop Coakley said. "And now this latest development." They met that summer of 1968 in Overland Park; Bishop-designate Conley's father was the baseball team's coach. They were good friends through middle school and high school and were roommates at the University of Kansas. Both also studied at Mount St. Mary's Seminary in Emmitsburg, Md.; both were ordained priests for the Diocese of Wichita, and both later studied in Rome.

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