To end the year with joy, we celebrated five ordinations of Sedes Sapientiae alumni during the month of December, two priestly and three diaconal ordinations.
The first one took place on 3 December in the Archdiocese of Hanoi (Vietnam). There, along with ten other candidates, Van Vien Tran was ordained a priest, who resided in our seminary from 2014 to 2021. The Archdiocese of Hanoi has 317,000 Catholics, representing just under four percent of the total population in this region of Vietnam.
On 8 December, the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, Bernard Lubuva was ordained deacon in the diocese of Kondoa (Tanzania). He received his seminary training at Sedes Sapientiae from 2019 to 2022. The diocese of Kondoa was established in 2011, in a mostly Islamic region of Tanzania. Catholics number 62,000, ten percent of the population.
Still on the African continent, Siyabonga Banele Ndlovu, who was a student at Sedes Sapientiae from 2014 to 2020, was ordained a priest on 10 December. He belongs to the diocese of Witbank (South Africa), where, as in the previous cases, Catholics are a tiny minority: four percent of a total population of more than three million people in the South African province of Mpumalanga.
On 12 December, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Jershom Colico was ordained a deacon in the diocese of Sorsogon (Philippines), located in the Bicol region, which lies more or less in the centre of the archipelago. Catholics do form a majority there: 93 percent of a population of 763,000. The diocese has 168 priests to serve them pastorally.
The last alumnus to be ordained during the month of December, on the 17th, was Valentine Ezumezu, who stayed at Sedes from 2019 to 2022. He belongs to the Archdiocese of Onithsa (Nigeria), home to 1,857,060 Catholics who make up 84 percent of a total population of over two million people.
To all the newly ordained we wish them all the best in their ministry and assure them of our prayers.