Michael Rowland (prelate)

Michael Vincent Paschal Rowland, OFM ( born March 18, 1929 in Grays, United Kingdom, † 23 September 2012 in Dundee, South Africa) was the Roman Catholic Bishop of Dundee.

Life

Michael Rowland, the third of seven children, attended St. Thomas of Canterbury Parochial School in Grays and the St. Bonaventure School in Forest Gate. In 1940 he tried to enter the service of the Royal Air Force, but joined with his graduation at the end of World War II, the Congregation of the Franciscan. On 3 October 1945 he took up his novitiate; first vows he took off on 13 October 1946. He received after his training at the Franciscan House of Studies in East Bergholt on 21 March 1953, the ordination. At first he was a chaplain in the parish of Aldridge / Shelfield at Birmingham.

In 1955 he went to the mission to South Africa. Rowland initially worked in Ermelo and Bethal. In 1956 he studied the language isiZulu in a mission station of the Benedictines in Zululand. In 1958 he became pastor in Dundee in the newly established Apostolic Prefecture of Volksrust, later he was in the mission areas in Ladysmith and Mhlumayo active. In 1965 he became superior of the English Province 's Franciscan mission in South Africa and was involved in a merger of the Franciscan mission activities in South Africa. He set up administrative structures and built a novitiate on. In 1977, he became the first president of the Franciscan Federation of Southern Africa and Rhodesia.

Pope John Paul II appointed him to survey the Apostolic Prefecture to a diocese on March 17, 1983, the first Bishop of Dundee. He received his episcopal consecration of the Bishop of Kokstad, Wilfrid Fox Napier, OFM, on 17 September of the same year; Denis Eugene Hurley were co-consecrators OMI, Archbishop of Durban, and Mansuet Delaware Biyase, Bishop of Eshowe. He built on the management of the new diocese and was responsible for the construction of 83 churches, 20 kindergartens, a children's home, a nursing home, 15 elementary schools, 3 high schools, 7 religious convents, four clinics and two pastoral centers.

September 30, 2005, Pope Benedict XVI. be pre- attached for reasons of age resignation to. He then lived in the Mission Maria Ratschitz mission and engaged in Duduza Care Centre in Wasbank, KwaZulu -Natal, for the care of AIDS patients.