From: Ouko joachim omolo
The News Dispatch with Omolo Beste in images
SATURDAY, JUNE 8, 2013
Rev Fr Thomas Oliha of the congregation of the Apostles of Jesus is installed tomorrow Sunday, June 9, 2013 as the Apostolic Administrator for the Catholic Diocese of Torit, Eastern Equatoria State. South Sudan – Torit diocese has an apostolic administrator.
Fr Oliha was appointed by Pope Francis to take care of the diocese following the death of the late bishop Johnson Akio Mutek, on March 18 2013, after a long kidney related illness.
Following our conversation with Fr Oliha on telephone, plans for installation is complete. In our telephone conversation with Ancia Acen, one of the planning committees the installation is expected to attract over 6,000 people, one of the biggest ever in Torit.
The Caretaker Administrator of Torit Diocese, Father Dario Hakim, told Eye Radio that Christians in Torit are happy because they have a leader now: “The people needed a leader and they are happy.
This is the first appointment of a highest ecclesiastical authority for South Sudan by Pope Francis, who was elected on 13th of March following the resignation of Pope Benedict on the 16th in February.
The congregation of the Apostles of Jesus was the first missionary religious institute to be founded for Africans on the African continent, particularly on the focus of Sudan.
During the 21-year war, members of the Apostles of Jesus from South Sudan mainly worked in Kenya, and in the liberated areas under the SPLA control. Fr Oliha worked mainly in Juba. Until his appointment Fr Oliha was the Parish Priest of Gordian in the Catholic diocese of Wau.
Born in 1941 in Eastern Equatoria state, in South Sudan, the new Administrator was ordained a priest of the Congregation of the Apostles of Jesus, in 1969, at Moroto in Uganda. He served as rector of several seminary Schools in Uganda, Kenya and Sudan for over 30 years. Fr. Oliha has also served as the Superior General of the Apostles of Jesus congregation.
Apostolic Administrations are relatively new within the Catholic world. They are a creation of the Latin Church’s 1983 Code of Canon Law. This 1983 concept was a development of the ‘apostolic administrator’ as presented by the 1917 codification of Catholic ecclesial law by Pope Benedict XV.
Until 1983 an apostolic administrator was seen as one who administrates a diocese in the name of the Pope. In instances where the local diocesan bishop was not capable of governing his diocese for a long period of time, and the duties to be fulfilled were more demanding than the office of a vicar general (a Catholic bishop’s second in charge) the Pope, as supreme Pastor could appoint an apostolic administrator who would govern the diocese, not as diocesan bishop but rather on behalf of the Pope.
Although the 1983 code does not speak of apostolic administrators in this way, the Latin Church has continued to experience such appointments as was understood in the earlier code of canon law.
Fr Thomas Oliha can be reached on mobile phone at +211912831477
Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
Tel +254 7350 14559/+254 722 623 578
E-mail omolo.ouko@gmail.com
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Real change must come from ordinary people who refuse to be taken hostage by the weapons of politicians in the face of inequality, racism and oppression, but march together towards a clear and unambiguous goal.
-Anne Montgomery, RSCJ UN Disarmament Conference, 2002