“He called me and told me that Pope Leo was asking me to be the Archbishop of Cape Town,” Bishop Sipuka said, and added, “These things are not expected, you don’t have a hint, you don’t apply for them. It always comes as a shock. After a short moment of thinking and praying, I said yes.”
He highlighted the importance of the Bishop’s role in the life of a diocese, noting that his appointment to the Archdiocese means a lot to the people of God in the Metropolitan See than to him.
“A Bishop is very important in the life of the Church because he facilitates the life of the Church, the worship, the pastoral work, the ordination of priests, and the assignment of Priests,” he said.
He emphasized that when there is no Bishop, as had been for the people of Cape Town, “there is usually a gap that is felt by the people whose diocese is vacant.”
The transfer of Bishop Sipuka, who has been serving as the Local Ordinary of the South African Diocese since his Episcopal Ordination in May 2008, to the Cape Town Archdiocese was published by the Holy See Press Office on Friday, January 9.
Born on 27 April 1960, in Idutywa in South Africa’s Eastern Cape Province, the Archbishop-elect was ordained a Priest for the Diocese of Queenstown on 17 December 1988 after completing his Philosophical and theological studies.
In the January 11 interview, Bishop Sipuka also spoke about the broader social challenges facing South Africa and the role of the Church in addressing them, saying, “In the whole country, the issue of unemployment is something that haunts, or should haunt, everybody.”
From the Church’s perspective, the Archbishop-elect said, “our concern is the erosion of human dignity caused by unemployment, the inability to provide for oneself, for one’s family, and to live a decent life.”
He explained that from the point of view of the dignity of the human person, the Church is primarily concerned with the high rate of unemployment in the Southern African nation.
As a way forward, he said, “We continue to support efforts to create more employment, and we are also encouraging people to be entrepreneurial, rather than only seeking employment, so that they can create jobs themselves.”