Michael Gower Coleman

Michael Gower Coleman ( born April 19, 1939 in Mafeking, Cape Province; † 17 December 2011) was a South African clergyman and Roman Catholic Bishop of Port Elizabeth.

Life

Michael Gower Coleman, the oldest of seven children, came from an immigrant family with roots from England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. He attended Laerskool Zeerust in the Transvaal and the Christian Brothers College in Kimberley, Northern Cape. After a gap year in Zambia he joined at the invitation of Bishop Ernest Green at the St. John Vianney Seminary in Pretoria, the Diocesan Seminary of the Diocese of Port Elizabeth; at the University of South Africa, he studied philosophy. Michael Gower Coleman received on 30 June 1963, the ordination to the priesthood in his home parish of St. Patrick in Grahamstown. He was active in pastoral ministry at St. Francis Xavier in East London and the parish of Sacred Heart in King William 's Town. He was in the Mission Appeal programs in the U.S. active and completed management courses of the Jesuit Order. He founded the Marriage Encounter movement in South Africa. From 1981 to 1986 he taught at the Seminary of St. Peter and Paul in Hammanskraal, Transvaal.

Pope John Paul II appointed him on 21 March 1986 for the Bishop of Port Elizabeth. The Archbishop of Cape Town, Stephen Naidoo CSsR, donated to him on 22 June of the same year, the episcopal ordination; Co-consecrators were John Patrick Murphy, Bishop Emeritus of Port Elizabeth, and Andrew T. Zolile Brook, Bishop of Umtata. He was commissioner of the Bishops' Conference of the Southern African Council of Priests ( SACOP ) and the Inter- Regional Meeting of Bishops in Southern Africa ( IMBISA ). From 2000 to 2011 he was the first vice president of the Southern African Catholic Bishops ' Conference. On August 20, 2011, Pope Benedict XVI. his retirement request instead.