Capra (Mauretania Caesariensis)
Capra was a town and bishopric in the late Roman province of Mauretania Caesariensis, in what is today the area of Béni Mansour and Béni Abbès, Algeria.
Ecclesiastical history
Victor Vitensis speaks of Capra Picta as a town in that province, where some Catholics sent there into internal exile under the Arian Genseric, king of the Vandals from 428 to 477, converted a great number of the local population to Christianity.[1]
In the Notitia Provinciarum et Civitatum Africae,[2] Primus, bishop of the church in Capra, appears in the list of the Catholic bishops whom Huneric summoned to Carthage in 484 and then exiled.[3][1][4]
Titular see
No longer a residential bishopric, Capra is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see.[5]
The Ancient diocese was nominally restored in 1933 and since had the following incumbents, both of the lowest (episcopal) or intermediary (archiepiscopal) ranks :
- Titular Bishop Alain Sauveur Ferdinand van Gaver, Paris Foreign Missions Society M.E.P. (1965.03.22 – 1965.12.18)
- Titular Archbishop Joseph Floribert Cornelis, Benedictine Order (O.S.B.) (1967.04.13 – 1974.11.13)
- Titular Bishop Hieronymus Herculanus Bumbun, Capuchin Friars (O.F.M. Cap.) (1975.12.19 – 1977.02.26) (later Archbishop)
- Titular Bishop Anatole Milandou (1983.07.22 – 1987.10.03) (later Archbishop)
- Titular Bishop Camillus Archibong Etokudoh (1988.01.18 – 1989.09.01)
- Titular Bishop Joseph Shipandeni Shikongo, Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate (O.M.I.) (1994.03.14 – ...), Apostolic Vicar of Rundu (Namibia)
References
- 1 2 Stefano Antonio Morcelli, Africa christiana, Volume I, Brescia 1816, pp. 117–118
- ↑ Johann Peter Kirsch, "Notitia Provinciarum et Civitatum Africae" in Catholic Encyclopedia (New York 1911)
- ↑ Notitia Provinciarum et Civitatum Africae
- ↑ Pius Bonifacius Gams, Series episcoporum Ecclesiae Catholicae, Leipzig 1931, p. 464
- ↑ Annuario Pontificio 2013 (Libreria Editrice Vaticana 2013 ISBN 978-88-209-9070-1), p. 858