Pope Francis has named Auxiliary Bishop Shorot Francis Gomes of Dhaka Archdiocese as the new bishop of predominantly indigenous Sylhet Diocese in northeast Bangladesh.
Archbishop George Kocherry, apostolic nuncio to Bangladesh, announced the appointment at 4pm local time on May 12, according to a press release from the Catholic bishops’ Social Communication Commission.
Bishop Gomes, 56, is the second bishop of Sylhet Diocese since it was carved out from Dhaka Archdiocese and made a diocese in 2011. He succeeds Oblate Bishop Bejoy N. D’Cruze, the first bishop, who was appointed archbishop of Dhaka and transferred to the nation’s capital last year.
From 2012-15, Bishop Gomes served as the vicar general of Sylhet Diocese, where most Catholics belong to various ethnic groups including tea workers covering Sylhet, Moulvibazar and Habiganj districts, the nation’s tea plantation hub.
Sylhet Diocese covers the four civils districts of Sylhet Division and has about 20,000 ethnic indigenous Catholics from the Khasi, Kharia, Garo and Kanda peoples in seven parishes.
Bishop Gomes was born on Dec. 15, 1965, to Catholic parents Augustine Modhu Gomes and Thecla Gomes in a village in the Holy Rosary Church parish in Hashnabad, Dhaka district. He is the second of three siblings.
He served various parishes in Dhaka and from 1998 to 2002 he studied and obtained a doctoral degree in moral theology from Rome
Both of his sisters — Sunita Gomes and Anita Gomes — are nuns belonging to Sisters of Our Lady of the Missions (RNDM) and Our Lady of Sorrows (OLS) congregations respectively.
He completed his primary and secondary schooling at Holy Cross High School, Bandura, and entered the Little Flower Minor Seminary in Dhaka. In 1984, he joined Holy Spirit Major Seminary and was ordained a priest on May 31, 1990.
He served various parishes in Dhaka and from 1998 to 2002 he studied and obtained a doctoral degree in moral theology from Rome. He also taught moral theology in the major seminary from 2003-09.
He was the rector of Little Flower Minor Seminary in Bandura from 1994-97 and rector of Holy Spirit National Major Seminary in Dhaka from 2009-12.
Since 2005, he has been the chaplain of the Bangladesh chapter of Marriage Encounter Worldwide, a global Catholic movement for revitalizing Christian marriage.
Pope Francis on Feb. 8, 2016, appointed him as auxiliary bishop of Dhaka and he was ordained in Dhaka on April 22, 2016.
Christians make up less than 1 percent or some 600,000 of about 160 million citizens in Muslim-majority Bangladesh. There are about 400,000 Catholics in two archdioceses and six dioceses, and about half of the Catholics are from minority groups.
