OTHER PONTIFICAL ACTS

VATICAN CITY, DEC 30, 1999 (VIS) - The Holy Father:

- Appointed Bishop Raul Vera Lopez O.P., coadjutor of San Cristobal de las Casas, Mexico, as bishop of Saltillo (area 129,100, population 1,585,170, Catholics 1,400,490, priests 151, permanent deacons 2, religious 479), Mexico. He succeeds Bishop Francisco Raul Villalobos Padilla, whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same diocese the Holy Father accepted, upon having reached the age limit.

- Erected the diocese of Wiawso (area 11,240, population 641,500, Catholics 136,036, priests 41, religious 11), Ghana, with territory taken from the diocese of Sekondi-Takoradi, making it a suffragan of the Metropolitan Church of Cape Coast. He appointed Fr. Joseph Francis Kweku Essien of the clergy of Sekondi-Takoradi, military chaplain to the Ghanaian armed forces, as first bishop of Wiawso. The bishop-elect was born in Apowa, Ghana, in 1945 and ordained a priest in 1977.

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