On Oct. 7 Cosme Hoang Van Dat, SJ was ordained a bishop and installed as the ninth Bishop of the Diocese of Bac Ninh, Vietnam. The Principal Consecrator was Bishop Peter Nguyen Van Nhon of Dalat, the president of the Vietnam Conference of Catholic Bishops. Twenty-one bishops took part, including Cardinal Paul Joseph Pham Dinh Tung, retired Archbishop of Hanoi; hundreds of priests and religious and over ten thousand faithful joined the ceremony.

Bishop Cosme Hoang was born on July 20, 1947. After he and his family fled to the south in 1954, following the Communists’ takeover of the north, he joined the Jesuits in 1968. Two years later he began his philosophy and theology studies at Pius X Pontifical Institute in Da Lat. He was ordained a priest on June 5, 1976. He served in a variety of leadership roles within the Society of Jesus and provided pastoral care for patients with leprosy. Following advanced studies in spirituality in France in 2002 he was spiritual adviser at Hanoi Major Seminary until the new appointment.

Bac Ninh is a suffragan diocese of Hanoi archdiocese, 30 kilometers northeast of Ha Noi, with an area of 24,600 square km. The diocese has 43 priests, 268 nuns, 39 seminarians, and 127,734 faithful among a population of 7,181,000 people. (Source: www.sjweb.info)