On Feb. 15, Father Prosper Balthazar Lyimo, will be consecrated as auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Arusha in northern Tanzania in East Africa, the number two post in the archdiocese, where he will serve under the ordinary, Archbishop Josaphat Louis Lebulu. A story I wrote last Nov. 25 here on Father Prosper, according to my WordPress daily statistics, is presumably being fairly widely read in Tanzania, as these things go, relatively speaking. Even now, some 2½ months after the original blog posting on soundingsjohnbarker, I see on average one, two or three readers a day – perhaps even slightly more this week – logging on from Tanzanian Internet Service Providers (ISPs), as the date for Father Prosper’s episcopal ordination next Sunday is at hand.
A handful of online readers every day in Tanzania may not seem like such a big deal unless you have some idea of how vast and rugged the Archiocese of Arusha is. The Archdiocese of Arusha is an area of 67,340 square kilometres with a population of 2.364 million people, of which 512,073 are Catholics. It has 128 priests. There are 59 diocesan priests, including Father Prosper, and 69 religious from priestly congregations, including the Holy Ghost Fathers, whose presence in the archdiocese dates back to founding a mission station in Mesopotamia in 1926.
The archdiocese is named after the town of Arusha that lays at the foot of Mount Merit, one of the peaks of the Kilimanjaro Mountain Range to the west of Kibo, the highest peak of the range.
Arusha is the largest of all the archdioceses and dioceses in Tanzania, stretching some 400 kilometres southwards over the Maasai Steppes to Kiteto, bordering Morogoro and Dodoma dioceses; 200 kilometres to the west through Monduli over the Ngorongoro Crater along the famous Olduvai Gorge, over the Serengeti Plains and bordering Musoma and Shinyanga dioceses; 400 kilometres northwest to Loliondo bordering Ngong Diocese in Kenya; and 300 kilometres southeastwards, bordering Moshi, Same and Tanga dioceses.
While Father Prosper has extended his former parishioners here at St. Lawrence Roman Catholic Church in Thompson, Manitoba in Northern Canada, unceasing invitations to visit him in Tanzania, including for his Feb. 15 episcopal ordination, since his return home a couple of years ago after successfully defending his doctoral degree in canon law from Saint Paul University and the University of Ottawa, I have, as of yet, been unable to accept. But I do well remember receiving e-mails from Father Prosper’s personal Yahoo account, where he would apologize for the tardiness of his reply because he was out somewhere in the most rural parts of the archdiocese where electricity was often absent, never mind Internet connections to the outside world.
Father Prosper joined Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961 on April 3, 2012. The Knights of Columbus is a Catholic fraternal benefit organization headquartered in New Haven, Connecticut. Its origins date back to an Oct. 2, 1881 meeting organized by Father Michael J. McGivney, the assistant pastor at St. Mary’s Church in New Haven. The Knights of Columbus, made up of Father McGivney, Matthew C. O’Connor, Cornelius T. Driscoll, James T. Mullen, John T. Kerrigan, Daniel Colwell and William M. Geary, were officially chartered by the general assembly of the State of Connecticut on March 29, 1882, as a fraternal benefit society.
The Supreme Council in New Haven chartered Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961 with 59 charter members on May 6, 1967. Knights of Columbus Thompson Council #5961 were the 31st council in Manitoba to receive its charter. Father Prosper served as the Thompson council’s chaplain until June 2012.
One of the more obscure, at least for many, duties that go with Father Prosper’s new assignment is that on Feb. 15 he also becomes titular bishop of the Titular Episcopal See of Vanariona in what was Mauretania Caesariensis, a Roman Empire province located in northwestern Africa in what is now present day Algeria, and the Henchir Debik ancient ruin near Ksar Tyr, in neighbouring Tunisia, adjacent east of Algeria. How cool is that?
As Archbishop Lebulu remains the ordinary of the Archdiocese of Arusha and Bishop Prosper will, as of Sunday, be his auxiliary bishop there, he will as be a titular bishop elsewhere in Africa. Each titular bishop is assigned to a Titular See, which in the case of Bishop Prosper, will be Vanariona in what was Mauretania Caesariensis in what is now present day Algeria, and the Henchir Debik ancient ruin near Ksar Tyr, in neighbouring Tunisia, adjacent east of Algeria.
A Titular See is a diocese that is no longer in existence. In Asia Minor and North Africa, many dioceses became defunct after they became schismatic, or when they were swept by Islam, or when they simply disappeared because the importance of those cities declined. The Apostolic See can also suppress a diocese when the number of Catholics in the diocese has declined sharply. The nomination of titular archbishops and Bishops is reserved to the Holy See. Their former title in partials infidelium was changed in 1882 to that of titular bishop. They have no jurisdiction over their titular diocese, but enjoy, with few exceptions, the privileges and honours of residential bishops.
There are currently 1,904 Titular Episcopal Sees; 1,065 have an archbishop or bishop appointed to them, while another 839 are currently vacant.
Vanariona has been without a titular archbishop or bishop since May 18, 2013. Father Prosper is set to become the fourth bishop or archbishop of Vanariona. The last incumbent was Archbishop Józef Piotr Kupny, who became archbishop of the Archdiocese of Wrocław [or Breslavia, as it is known in German] in Poland on June 16, 2013.
Before him serving in the Titular See of Vanariona, there was Patriarch Filipe Neri António Sebastião do Rosário Ferrão, archbishop of both the Latin rite Archdiocese of Goa e Damão and patriarch of the Patriarchate of East Indies; and from Jan. 5, 1968 until his death on Aug. 16, 1991, Bishop Raymond James Vonesh, a Chicago-born priest who also served as auxiliary bishop of Joliet, Illinois.
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