In a message to Catholic’s about the importance of the church’s anti-abortion stance, Bishop David O’Connell revealed he was diagnosed with skin cancer.
“Illness always seems different when it’s our own we are facing,” he begins a letter posted to the Diocese of Trenton’s website Thursday.
In the next paragraph, O’Connell, 56, writes about receiving the difficult news that he had cancer.
“What started out as a small skin cancer, became more aggressive, apparently due to my neglect,” he wrote. ‘It’ll go away,’ I thought. When I tried to dismiss the diagnosis as ‘my Irish skin,’ doctors were not so amused. ‘Bishop, cancer is cancer,’ was their sober reply.”
O’Connell, who is also a diabetic, said the right side of his nose was removed and rebuilt at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.
The operation reportedly went smoothly and from the letter, it appears O’Connell is now cancer-free.
“‘We got it all,’ were the only words I wanted to hear,” O’Connell wrote. “And, thank God, that’s what they said.”
A spokeswoman for the diocese declined to answer further questions about O’Connell’s diagnosis, his recovery, remission or the affect his condition had on running the diocese, home to 830,000 Catholics from four counties.
In his letter, O’Connell used news of his condition to segue into a message about the sanctity of life and the necessity of being a “pro-life” Catholic.
“Catholics must be pro-life,” he said. “There is simply no other ‘choice’ or alternative, no valid counter-argument. Our pro-life position must embrace the womb and the tomb and every moment in between, without forgetting or ignoring support for the whole of life until its natural end as determined by our Creator.”