By Paschal Norbert
TORIT, NOVEMBER 8, 2022 (CISA)– Pope Francis has appointed Fr Emmanuel Bernardino Lowi Napeta, a priest of the Catholic Archdiocese of Khartoum as the new bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Torit, South Sudan, in an announcement made by the Holy See Press Office on November 8.
The parish priest of St. Mathew’s Cathedral, Khartoum, was born on December 19, 1973, in Kapoeta, in the Catholic diocese of Torit. He attended St. Augustine Minor Seminary in Khartoum from 1994 to 1995, and then St. Paul Major Seminary in Khartoum from 1996 to 2003.
On October 2, 2004, Fr Lowi Napeta was ordained a priest for the archdiocese of Khartoum.
He has served as parish vicar of the Holy Spirit parish in Omdurman, Khartoum, from 2004 to 2007 and director of the Institute of Catechists for the Third Millennium, Khartoum, from 2007 to 2010.
Fr Lowi Napeta has a bachelor’s degree in the Science of Education and Religious Education, and a licentiate in Education with a specialization in Youth Pastoral Care and Catechetics from the Salesian Pontifical University in Rome.
After he finished his studies in 2014, he became the assistant parish priest of St. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Khartoum until 2017. Since 2017, he has been the parish priest of St. Mathew’s Cathedral.
Fr Lowi Napeta will take over from Most Rev Stephen Ameyu Martin Mula of the Catholic Archdiocese of Juba, the apostolic administrator and immediate former bishop of the diocese as the fourth bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Torit.
Archbishop Ameyu, however, continues to be the apostolic administrator of Torit “until the bishop-elect will take the possession of the Episcopal See of that diocese.”
