Bangladeshi Church welcomes new Nuncio

Dhaka, 09 Nov 2013: More than a thousand lay Catholics, 100 nuns, 30 priests and 11 bishops from all the dioceses of Bangladesh, participated in the inaugural Mass of Archbishop George Kocherry, the new Apostolic Nuncio to Bangladesh. The function took place on Thursday in Dhaka. Archbishop Patrick D'Rozario welcomed the new papal representative to the country expressing his "full support of the whole Church of Bangladesh".

Archbishop Kocherry, 68, is Indian and arrived in the country on 10 September. Before the ceremony he met President Abdul Hamid. During the liturgy, he hailed the community saying "I am very happy that I came to Bangladesh. I will work together for the welfare of all and for humanity".

Archbishop Kocherry was born on 4 February 1945 in Changanassery in the Southern Indian state of Kerala. He left India in 1967 to study philosophy and theology in Rome, where he took a doctorate in Canon Law. In 1974 he was ordained a priest. He has served as secretary in the nunciatures of South Korea, Costa Rica, Nigeria, West Indies, Thailand, Singapore, Switzerland and Australia.

In 2000 he was appointed Apostolic Nuncio to Ghana and elevated to archbishop. He served for eight years in the African country. In 2008 he was moved to the Nunciature in Zimbabwe. He came to Bangladesh to take the place of the American Archbishop Joseph Marino, whom the Vatican called to head the first diplomatic mission in Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, which was created earlier this year.
Source: AsiaNews