TAINAN (UCAN): Amid cheers and great enthusiasm, hundreds of Catholics welcomed Bishop John Lee Juo-wang as the new bishop of the Diocese of Tainan in southern Taiwan.
The fifth bishop of Tainan was ordained at the gymnasium hall of church-run Sheng Kung Girls’ High School in Tainan on January 1. The 54-year-old is the first native bishop of the diocese in three decades.
About 1,500 people including 100 priests, 11 bishops and the Vatican’s charge d’affaires, Monsignor Arnaldo Catalan, attended the ceremony at which Bishop Bosco Lin Chi-nan, the retired bishop of Tainan, was the main celebrant.
The ceremony was broadcast live for those who couldn’t attend in person out of concern of the Covid-19 coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2).
Bishop Lee was born on 2 November 1966 to parents who fled to Taiwan from mainland China amid the political upheaval of the 1950s, and brings with him years of experience in pastoral ministry.
His parents gave up their youngest child for adoption to the local Lee family as they struggled financially, and then he was re-adopted by the Huang family.
Bishop Lee attended the Salesian High School in Tainan and entered minor seminary at the age of 12. He studied philosophy and theology at St. Pius X Seminary in Tainan from 1984 to 1992. He was ordained a priest on 1 January 1993.
He was assistant parish priest of Tainan Cathedral Parish from 1993 to 1996, then parish priest of Holy Name of Jesus Parish from 1996 to 1999.
He later studied dogmatic theology and obtained a licentiate degree from the Pontifical Urban University in Rome.
He was appointed parish priest of the Causa Nostrae Laetitiae Shrine in 2002 and parish priest of St. Joseph’s Church in 2014.
Bishop Lee was also president of the Commission for the Promotion of Vocations and became chancellor of the Diocese of Tainan in 2017. From 2019 until the present, he has served as the vicar general of the diocese.
Among those in attendance at the ceremony were Taiwan’s former vice president, Philip Chen, and Huang Wei-cher, the mayor of Tainan.
In his message, Chen hoped Bishop Lee would follow the footsteps of Bishop Lin in “promoting love” even during the time of the pandemic and foster the Church’s mission through evangelisation, education and social services.
Huang praised the retired bishop for his great social service in past years and invited him to join the municipality as a consultant in his retirement.
Catholics comprise about one percent of Taiwan’s estimated population of 24 million. The Catholic Church in Taiwan has about 225,000 members. Tainan, one of the smallest dioceses, has about 7,500 Catholics.
