MAKENI CITY NOVEMBER 3, 2015 (CISA) – Most Reverend Natale Paganelli was on October 31 ordained as the new bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Makeni.
The Episcopal Ordination took place in Makeni city, in northern Sierra Leone and was presided over by Archbishop Miroslaw Adamczyk, Apostolic Nuncio of Liberia, Sierra Leone and The Gambia, Vatican Radio reported.
Archbishop Adamczyk was assisted during the ceremony by Bishop Patrick Koroma of the Catholic Diocese of Kenema who is the President of the Bishops Conference of Sierra Leone and Gambia and Bishop Emeritus George Biguzzi of the Catholic Diocese of Makeni.
The newly ordained bishop who is the former Apostolic Administrator of the Catholic Diocese of Makeni was elevated to the rank of a bishop on July 18 by Pope Francis and was assigned the titular see of Gadiaufala.
Bishop Natale or Natalio Paganelli as he is known in the diocese is a member of the Xaverian Missionaries and was born in Grignano di Brembate, in the Diocese of Bergamo, Italy on December 24, 1956.
He was ordained as priest on December 25, 1980 in Parma and later spent twenty years in mission in Mexico before going to Sierra Leone in 2005.
