OTHER PONTIFICAL ACTS

VATICAN CITY, DEC 6, 2006 (VIS) - The Holy Father:

 - Appointed Bishop Stanislaw Wojciech Wielgus of Plock, as metropolitan archbishop of Warsaw (area 3,350, population 1,533,600, Catholics 1,439,600, priests 1,076, religious 1,020), Poland. The archbishop-elect was born in Wierzchowiska, Poland in 1939, he was ordained a priest on 1962 and consecrated a bishop in 1999. He succeeds Cardinal Jozef Glemp, whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same archdiocese, the Holy Father accepted, upon having reached the age limit.

 - Erected the new diocese of Sao Jose dos Pinhais (area 7,172, population 649,556, Catholics 497,454, priests 58, religious 165), Brazil, with territory taken from the archdiocese of Curitiba, making it a suffragan of the same metropolitan church. He appointed Bishop Ladislau Biernaski C.M., auxiliary of Curitiba, as first bishop of the new diocese.

 - Appointed as ordinary members of the Pontifical Academy for Life: Bishop Daniel Nlandu Mayi, auxiliary and vicar general of the archdiocese of Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo; John Haas, president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, U.S.A.; Alejandro Cesar Serani Merlo, professor of neurology and bioethics at the faculty of medicine and surgery of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile; and Monica Lopez Barahona, dean of the faculty of bio-sciences at the "Francisco de Vitoria" University of Madrid, Spain.
NER:RE:ECE:NA/.../...                                VIS 20061206 (220)