MANILA, Philippines — Pope Francis has appointed a missionary Filipino priest to lead the papal mission to the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu.
According to the CBCPNews, the official news service provider of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), the pontiff appointed Fr. Eliseo Napiere of the Mission Society of the Philippines (MSP) as superior of the missio sui iuris (independent mission) of Funafuti, the capital of Tuvalu.
Napiere, 58, would succeed Bishop Reynaldo Getalado, who was ordained and installed coadjutor bishop of Rarotonga in Cook Islands last April 27.
CBCPNews said a missio sui iuris is a special mission established by the pope for a remote region with few Catholics.
Funafuti has a population of around 11,000, of whom only 110 are Catholics belonging to one parish.
Since 2016, Napiere had been assigned in the United States and first served as parish vicar of Saint Edward Parish in the city of Corona, under the Diocese of San Bernardino in California.
In 2018, he was the parish priest of Saint James the Less Perris Parish, part of the Diocese of San Bernardino.
Napiere was born in Maribojoc, Bohol and was ordained priest on Jan. 19, 1991 for the MSP, the chief missionary arm of the Philippine Catholic Church.
In 2002, he was sent as a missionary to the Diocese of Taichung in Taiwan, where he served until 2016.