A joy and privilege to serve this area.

The Bishop of Newcastle and Hexham Ambrose Griffiths has announced his retirement. Here he talks about his love for the North East, his faith in successor Kevin Dunn and the changes he has seen in the Catholic Church over the years

MY main joy has been the support of the diocese and to see the tremendous growth of the number of people involved in the church. They are a real lifeline for worshippers who are lonely or housebound.

"Kevin Dunn has a wonderful background and we are getting a very good man. I think he will make a marvellous bishop for the diocese and I'm sure he will receive a very warm welcome.

"The new bishop will discover, as I have done, what a wonderful part of England this is and he will be supported by the warmth and openness of its people.

"It has been a joy and a privilege to serve the people of Newcastle and Hexham for the past 12 years but it's right that a new man should take over with his own ideas which will serve and enrich the diocese.

"People here are more friendly, more generous and more kind than anywhere else in the country and an enormous improvement has taken place in the last few years here.

"When I first came here we had almost no youth work in the diocese, but now we have chaplains in almost all our senior schools and we even have a youth mission team.

"We are now hoping to have our own retreat centre for young people, school groups and people who want to train as future leaders in the church. Young people need to have the opportunity to challenge and explore faith themselves.

"We still have quite a high proportion of priests to people in this country and we have been working for years and years to develop new ways of training priests.

"A great deal of work goes into finding a new bishop and a number of priests will be consulted and anyone else who wants to chip in and say something can.

"The recent misbehaviour and bad ways of a very small minority priests is an appalling burden to us, but you can only take action about things you know of and often you are the last person to hear about it.

"The damage that some adults have done to children all over the country is terrible.

"We have long since encouraged people to report any suspicions they many have and we now have people who will vet those working in the parish with children and vulnerable adults.

"I think after the Ian Huntley case people's confidence in the criminal records service has been greatly undermined.

"But we have to build trust because we seem to have so little trust in our society today and this can have terrible consequences.

"The day after Kevin is ordained I shall leave the diocese and I plan to return to the parish in Leyland, Lancashire, to which I was first summoned to be a bishop. I will become an assistant to the bishop there.

"I'm determined there should not be a gap between a bishop and the people, and I think people are often frightened of the title bishop. But I will answer to anything, so people can call me father or bishop.

"It was Cardinal Basil Hume who said that he would answer to anything as long as it wasn't `Hey you!'.

"I'm looking forward to seeing the new film The Passion of The Christ. I think it will be a powerful reminder of the ways people can treat each other appallingly.

"I imagine it will be very violent, but then crucifixion was violent and it will remind us how much Christ loved us to suffer like that.