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Pope Francis appoints Filipino missionary as coadjutor bishop of diocese in Cook Islands
Pope Francis appoints Filipino missionary as coadjutor bishop of diocese in Cook Islands
Pope Francis has appointed Fr. Reynaldo Bunyi Getalado of the Mission Society of the Philippines (MSP) as the new coadjutor bishop of the Diocese of Rarotonga in Cook Islands.
Prior to his appointment, Fr. Getalado has been serving as a missionary of the MSP to the Mission Sui Iuris of Funafuti, the capital island nation of Tuvalu.
The CBCP said, the Filipino missionary’s appointment was announced by the Vatican on Dec. 8, on the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.
As coadjutor bishop, Fr. Getalado will succeed the diocese’s current Bishop Paul Patrick Donoghue, who is turning 75 in January next year, the mandatory retirement age for bishops.
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Rarotonga in the Cook Islands is a suffragan diocese of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Suva in neighbouring Fiji.
Born in 1959, the priest is from Muntinlupa City. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Zoology at the Far Eastern University in Manila in 1979 before he joined the MSP.
He earned his philosophical and theological studies at the Divine Word Seminary in Tagaytay City. He was ordained to the priesthood on Aug. 4, 1988.
He was sent to the Diocese of Daru-Kiunga in Papua New Guinea, where he served for 11 years. He was later transferred to the Diocese of Auckland in New Zealand, where he served from 2000 to 2003.
From 2003 to 2004, Fr. Getalado went back to the Philippines and served as the parochial vicar of the Parish of Our Lady of the Abandoned in Mandaluyong City. Then from 2005 to 2014, he was assigned to the Diocese of Bougainville, an autonomous region in Papua New Guinea.
He has been serving as the Ecclesiastical Superior of the Mission Sui Iuris of Funafuti since 2014.
The Cook Islands is a self-governing island country in the South Pacific Ocean in free association with New Zealand. It comprises 15 islands with a total land area of 236.7 square kilometres.
The Diocese of Rarotonga was established in 1966. It has a population of around 14,000, of which 17 percent are Roman Catholics. It is also served by four priests and 20 catechists.
According to the CBCP, Mission Sui Iuris of Funafuti and the Diocese of Rarotonga belong to a conference of bishops called the Episcopal Conferences of the Pacific or CEPAC.
Both are under the Vatican’s Dicastery for Evangelization, specifically the Section for First Evangelization and New Particular Churches, with Filipino Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle serving as its pro-prefect.