Ten months after Lafayette-in-Indiana Bishop William L. Higi submitted his resignation, the Vatican has still not named a replacement fueling rumors that the diocese may be merged with Indianapolis or have its boundaries redrawn. Indianapolis' Catholic archdiocese is a sprawling territory that stretches across central Indiana yet if you drive into Hamilton County, less than 10 miles north of the archbishop's office, you enter the realm of the Bishop of Lafayette.
This geographical quirk - that parishes in Indianapolis' northern suburbs answer to a bishop 70 miles away in Lafayette - is a remnant of Catholic boundaries drawn in the 1940s, when Hamilton County was nothing but farmland.
Rumors have been circulating for 25 years but recently with renewed vigor.
"I really don't know what the source is but I've heard them and I think everybody has in Indianapolis and up here as well," said Kevin Cullen, a spokesman for the Diocese of Lafayette.
"The longer that there isn't a successor named then people say, 'What is really going on? Is this a behind-the-scenes thing to make Lafayette part of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis?' " Marian College theology professor Andy Hohman said.
"That is an old rumor that seems to surface every time there is a change in bishops in the state," the statement said. "It has never been true in the past, and I'm confident it isn't true now, either." Lafayette Bishop Higi said in a statement.
Indianapolis archdiocesan spokesman Greg Otolski said Archbishop Daniel M. Buechlein would not comment on rumors.
"Mergers almost never happen, at least in the United States," Fr James Coriden, a professor of canon law and church history at Washington Theological Union, told the Indy Star.
"It would only happen if Lafayette were in dire financial straits. But I've never heard that they were."
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