Sr. Jecinter Antoinette Okoth, FSSA
The Episcopal Ordination and installation of Bishop-Elect for South Sudan’s Rumbek Diocese Msgr. Christian Carlassare has been postponed to next year 2022, the Apostolic Nuncio in Kenya and South Sudan has said. 
Msgr. Christian Carlassare
“It is my duty to inform you, on behalf of the Holy See, that the episcopal consecration of the Bishop-elect of Rumbek Rev. Christian Carlassare has been postponed to 2022, at a date still to be determined,” Archbishop Bert van Megen said in a statement dated October 30.
Pope Francis appointed Msgr. Carlassare as bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Rumbek Monday, March 8, after a decade of the Diocese being vacant and under the governance of a Diocesan Coordinator.
In the Nuncio’s letter addressed to Local Ordinaries and Apostolic Administrators in Sudan and South Sudan, he notes that during the time of reflection and preparations for the consecration, the Bishop-elect and the Diocese of Rumbek are in “your fervent prayers.”
Earlier this year after the Episcopal Ordination was scheduled for May 23, it was later postponed when the Bishop-elect was shot on both legs by gunmen at the priests’ residence in Rumbek.
When he was recuperating in Kenya before traveling to his home county Italy, the Bishop-elect toldAMECEA online that the people have to “look beyond the gunshots but look for the truth and find healing for the community of Rumbek.”
“As much as I am receiving care here, we must care for the wounds of Rumbek people and the people who are suffering the violence that is present there,” Msgr. Carlassare said when he was still receiving medical attention, asking the people of South Sudan “never to do evil when asked to do so.”
The Diocese has been under the governance of Bishop Matthew Remijio Adam Gbitiku of the Catholic Diocese of Wau, South Sudan, a member of MCCJ who was appointed by the Pope in the month of May to take care of the Diocese, “until Msgr. Carlassare is healed and ordained bishop.”