First Asian-American Catholic bishop to speak Sept. 29

Author: Michael O. Garvey

Auxiliary Bishop Ignatius Wang of San Francisco will speak about his life and Asian-American Catholicism at 4 p.m. Sept. 29 (Monday) in the Jordan Auditorium of the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business.p. Bishop Wang, whose Notre Dame visit is being sponsored by the Office of Campus Ministry and the Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism, was born in Beijing on Feb. 27, 1934, the fifth of eight children in a Chinese family which has been Catholic for 12 generations.p. Bishop Wang, who speaks English, Cantonese, Italian, Mandarin and French, studied for the priesthood in Hong Kong, where he was ordained in 1959. Following his ordination, he entered the Gregorian University in Rome, where he earned a doctorate in canon law. Unable to return to China, he served for 12 years as a parish priest and vicar general in the Diocese of St. George’s in Grenada.p. In 1974, he was assigned to the archdiocese of San Francisco, where he served as pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Church for 10 years. In 1981, he became the coordinator of the Chinese Apostolate in San Francisco, and in 1998 he was appointed chancellor of the San Francisco Archdiocese. Last January, he became the first Asian-American Catholic bishop.p. Following his talk, Bishop Wang will preside at Mass in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at 5:15 p.m.

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