OCEANIA/PAPUA NEW GUINEA - Auxiliary Bishop of Rabaul appointed

Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - The Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI on 6 December 2007, appointed as Auxiliary Bishop of the archdiocese of Rabaul (Papua New Guinea), Rev. Fr. John Doaninoel, S.M., Regional Superior of the Society of Mary, assigning to him the titular see of Rusgunie.
Fr John Doaninoel, S.M., was born in 1 March 1950 at Timputz, in the diocese of Bougainville. For the last two years of secondary school education he went to St. Peter Chanel Minor Seminary in Ulapia. Later he entered the Society of Mary and took his first vows on 2 February 1974. He studied theology at Bomana major seminary and was ordained a priest in his home parish church at Tiputz on 20 December 1980. Since then he has ministered as follows: 1980-1984: Pastoral ministry at Buin; 1984-1988: parish priest at Hehela-Buka and then at Tubiana; 1988-1997: Regional Superior of the Marist Fathers; 1992-1994: prisoner of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (a period spent in isolation in the forest); 1994: 1996: refresher courses in Fiji Islands; 1996-1997: Course for formators at Blackrock, Dublin, Ireland; 1997-2005: rector of the Marist College at Bomana. since 2005 Regional Superior of the Marist Fathers. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 6/12/2007; Righe 15; Parole 194)