Western Wisconsin Catholics welcome a new bishop, 13 years ago

Just before New Year’s Eve of 2004, the Vatican appointed Jerome Listecki to become bishop of the La Crosse Diocese.  Listecki was a Chicago native named to succeed Raymond Burke, who had just been nominated as the new archbishop of St. Louis.  Bishop Listecki only served in La Crosse for five years before being promoted to archbishop of Milwaukee, but during his time in the Coulee Region, he led efforts to complete the Shrine of Guadalupe started by Burke.
 
La Crosse Lutherans had a female bishop at that time…April Larson.  She was the first woman to be elected a bishop in the ELCA denomination, and was serving her third term as head of the La Crosse Synod.  
 
The La Crosse Center had been without its own basketball team for three years, since the Bobcats folded.  But a new basketball promoter started talks with La Crosse that winter.  Worth Christie of Wyoming was planning to start an 8-team league called the All-American Professional Basketball League…designed as a minor-league system for the NBA.  Christie would need 3200 spectators a night to make a profit in La Crosse.  The center did not get a franchise in the AAPBL…just as well, because the league went out of business before the first season ever started.
 
Big hit movies toward the end of 2004 included “The Incredibles,” “National Treasure,” and “Meet the Fockers”…13 years ago, yesterday in La Crosse.