In view of the lingering crisis which has bedeviled the Catholic Diocese of Ahiara Mbaise, the hierarchy of the church has adopted another option for a way forward.
Pope Francis appointed Cardinal Onaiyekan as administrator of the troubled Nigerian Diocese. The cleric residing in Abuja is expected in Ahiara on Thursday July 18, 2013 even as programmes have commenced for his reception by the people of Mbaise.
The option is the deployment of John Cardinal Onaiyekan to the troubled Diocese. Competent sources revealed that Onaiyekan would take charge of the Diocese pending the determination of the fate of rejected Bishop Peter Okpaleke.
Since the appointment of Okpaleke and his subsequent consecration as Bishop outside Mbaise soil, discordant tones have continued to trail the new Bishop leading to schisms in Mbaise church.
The continued rejection has pitched anti-Okpaleke’s against protagonists of the Anambra born Bishop of Awka Catholic Diocese.
While the traditional rulers from Mbaise are at daggers-drawn with each other, the clergy and laity from the area are enmeshed in ego war over the coming of the Bishop.
Onaiyekan is expected to take charge and undertake bishopric duties in Ahiara as well as calm the nerves of warring factions before determining the faith of Bishop Okpaleke.
Reports reaching Trumpeta state that already there is jubilation galore in Mbaise land over the deployment of another Bishop to the diocese outside Okpaleke.
However, the Pope appoints an apostolic administrator when a see is vacant (sede vancante), but a sede plena appointment is not unprecedented: Archbishop Joseph Miot served as apostolic administrator of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, from 1997 to 2008, while Archbishop Francois-Wolff Ligonde remained archbishop, and Bishop Thomas Olmsted was appointed apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Gallup in 2008 while Bishop Donald Pelotte remained diocesan bishop via Catholicculture.
