In Allentown, the local press is sitting up and taking notice of the diocese’s incoming bishop — and his story is certainly out-of-the-ordinary, with influences ranging from Lincoln to Sheen to JPII:

Monsignor John Barres’ life must feel as unsettled as the weather of these late June days. He carries an awkward interim title — Bishop-elect Barres — and tries to tend to the daily duties of his office even as he prepares to leave it for good and assume command of the Catholic Diocese of Allentown.

Barres [pronounced Bar-riss] will become the fourth bishop of the diocese on July 30 and perhaps the first to find as much inspiration in a secular saint, Abraham Lincoln, as in more typical representatives from the heavenly rolls. The martyred president’s name arose time and again in a daylong interview at his chancery last this week and in the homily of the noon Mass he celebrated in St. Joseph on the Brandywine, a handsome 1840s church built with the pennies of immigrant Irish workers in DuPont’s blasting powder factories.

”Look at the virtues of Lincoln,” Barres said, urging appreciation of the man through the lens of the Beatitudes, Christ’s lessons of mercy and forgiveness from the Sermon on the Mount.

After all, Barres told parishioners, Lincoln was the president who ordered a military band to play ”Dixie” out of respect for a vanquished foe. It’s a perfect symbol of the kind of conciliatory outreach — to other faiths, to the dispossessed, to abuse victims — Barres considers essential to mending the fractures of a troubled world.

By all accounts, the bishop-elect is a man of quiet holiness and genial charisma who sometimes flirts with exhaustion from overwork in minding the umpteen tasks of a diocesan chancellor, which have ranged from mundane administrative errands to overseeing the installation of the bishop.

”An indefatigable worker,” said Monsignor Joseph Rebman, St. Joseph’s pastor and a longtime mentor to Barres. The monsignor warned, perhaps half-seriously, that Allentown shouldn’t grow overly accustomed to its new bishop — another way of underscoring Barres’ rapid rise through the episcopal ranks. He is only 48, which won’t make him the youngest bishop in the country but surely puts him near the top of that list. Who knows what’s to come?

But that’s getting ahead of the story. Right now, Barres is preparing to inherit a five-county diocese of 270,000 Catholics, many of them disaffected by last year’s closing of dozens of parishes and many others barely hanging onto their religious identity.

Meanwhile, the ranks of priests and other religious continue to decline, and the task of drawing interest to a life of self-denial seems close to impossible in a culture of excess. When a young man considers seminary today, ”his manhood is questioned, his sanity is questioned,” said Wilmington’s retired bishop, the Rev. Michael Saltarelli. But in Barres, the bishop said, potential priests will see a model of the vocation: someone whose demeanor and discipline reflect a life that thrives beyond material yearnings.

”Your bishop,” Saltarelli said, ”has shown me the face of Christ in so many ways.”

If that’s so, Barres said, it is thanks to his forebears and mentors — not only Saltarelli and Rebman, but Wilmington’s current bishop, W. Francis Malooly, another admirer of Lincoln who enlisted Barres’ help in writing a pastoral letter marking the president’s 200th birthday in February.

”The greatest vocational promotional technique is priests who have the joy of Bishop Malooly, Bishop Saltarelli. You don’t know the depths of the way they form you,” Barres said. ”When you’re working so closely, you pick up by osmosis how they handle situations.”

Barres, who earned a bachelor’s degree in literature at Princeton University and played point guard under legendary basketball coach Pete Carril, belongs to a generation of priests who came of age during the pontificate of Pope John Paul II and were inspired to the priesthood by his youthful vibrancy and globe-trotting missionary ways.

”There was that whole sense of being at the heart of the new evangelization,” Barres said, remembering his immediate affection for the pontiff.

So-called John Paul II priests tend toward doctrinal conservatism and ”reflect the sort of contemporary culture of the priest,” said the Rev. Thomas Dailey, director of the Salesian Center for Faith and Culture at DeSales University in Center Valley. He pointed to Barres’ master’s degree in business administration and his athletic background as characteristic of the generation.

”That kind of image of a young university student would parallel John Paul II’s experience of university life. It reflects someone educated in matters beyond theology. It is also used to say ‘This is someone who’s totally in line with the teachings of the pope,’ which of course we are all supposed to be.”

Perhaps it was inevitable that Barres’ path would lead him into the priesthood and episcopacy. He is the son of Oliver and Marjorie Barres, Protestant ministers who converted to Catholicism after growing convinced of its historical claim to be the church founded by Christ. The Barreses were brought into the church by Bishop Fulton Sheen of New York, a renowned prelate who preached to millions in the early days of television. Sheen, who also baptized the bishop-elect, is now a candidate for sainthood.

Check out the link for much more, including video and additional pictures.