Joseph Werth

Joseph Werth SJ ( born October 4, 1952 in Karaganda, Kazakhstan, Russian: Иосиф Верт, transliteration: Iosif Vert ) is Roman Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of the Transfiguration of Novosibirsk and Professor of the Byzantine Rite Catholics of Russia.

Life

Joseph Werth was born as the second of eleven children of an exiled to Kazakhstan Volga German family. Werth was influenced by the underground Catholic Church. In 1975 he joined after his military service novitiate of the Lithuanian Society of Jesus. After completing his studies from 1979 to 1984 at the seminary in Kaunas Joseph Werth received on 27 May 1984, the sacrament of Holy Orders and worked for a year as a chaplain in Švenčioniai / Lithuania, and two years as a pastor in Aktjubinsk / Kazakhstan. From 1987 to 1991, Joseph Werth pastor in Marx on the Volga, in which office he was succeeded by Clemens Pickel.

On April 13, 1991, Pope John Paul II appointed titular bishop of Bulna and appointed him as Apostolic Administrator of Siberia. The Episcopal ordination on June 16, 1991 He received his Francesco Colasuonno, Apostolic Delegate in Russia and later cardinal; Co-consecrators were Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, who was appointed administrator in Russia on the same day, and Juozas Tunaitis, Auxiliary Bishop of Vilnius.

On 18 May 1999 Werth was ordered and appointed on 11 February 2002 with the collection of Governorship to the diocese as bishop in Novosibirsk Apostolic Administrator of West Siberia (Siberia Occidentale ).

Furthermore, the German -speaking Joseph Werth 2005-2011 Chairman of the Russian Bishops' Conference.

On February 19, 2014, he was appointed by Pope Francis as a full member of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches.