Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) - On 7 December 2017 Cardinal Fernando Filoni, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, appointed the rev. Fr. Vincent Lockhart, of the clergy of the Motherwell diocese, as National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies (PMS) in Scotland for a five-year period (2017-2022).
The new National Director is Scottish and is 65 years old. As a deacon, he served as a missionary in Cameroon, where he returned after his presbyteral ordination, which took place in 1983 in Hamilton.
Overall, he spent 16 years on a mission in the south-western part of the African country, among the Bangwa, Mundani and Bayang populations, in a remote mountainous area, in the rainforest. In addition to his parish work, he dedicated himself to the pastoral care of youth, he was the director of 12 schools and committed himself to the construction of roads and bridges. In the mid-nineties he obtained a M.Sc. degree from Edimburgh University in African Studies and an M.Th. in "Non western Christianity" studies. He has been a parish priest since 1997 in his diocese of Motherwell, and in 2016 the Episcopal Conference of Scotland had appointed him interim director of Missio Scotland. (SL) (Agenzia Fides, 7/6/2018)
