Native bishops for two English Jesuit missions

THE British Jesuit Bishop of Georgetown has resigned to make way for his Guyanese auxiliary to succeed him, while in Rhodesia a Jesuit-educated African secular priest, who is a distinguished Shona novelist. has been named auxiliary bishop for the Salisbury archdiocese.
Both the new bishops belong to the secular clergy. The Guyana Mission and the Salisbury Mission (Rhodesia) both depend on the English province of the Society of Jesus.
In Guyana, Bishop Richard Lester Gully, S.J., Bishop of Georgetown since 1956. is now succeeded by his auxiliary, 45year-old Guyanese-born Bishop Benedict Singh.
A former pupil of the Jesuit Fathers' St. Stanislaus College, Georgetown, Bishop Singh later studied at the Propaganda College, Rome. secured a Doctorate in Theology. and was ordained in 1954. In Guyana he served as parish priest of Hague and Nleadowbank, and was chancellor of the Georgetown Diocese before he became auxiliary bishop in 1970.
Glasgow-born Bishop Guilly, who now resigns, is 67. and in good health. His resignation was dictated solely by the need of the local church for a locally born bishop.
Bishop Guilly served as senior chaplain in the British Army during World War 11 and was awarded the OBE. From 1946-54 he was superior of the Jesuit Mission of British Guiana and Barbados, and was then named Vicar Apostolic until his appointment as the first bishop of Georgetown.
Highlights of his term of office include the foundation of a minor seminary, the ordination of the first Guyanese priests, the growth of an exceptionally practical ecumenical movement. The dynamic David Rose Centre. which supplies social services to a very poor quarter of Georgetown is an inter-church project. In recent years the Jesuit Mission also set up the Guyana Institute for Social Research and Action.
Bishop Guilty hones to return to Guyana to work as a pastoral priest under his successor.
In Rhodesia. the wellknown, 40-year-old African novelist, Fr. Patrick Chakaipa, has been named auxiliary bishop to Archbishop Markall. S.J.. of Salisbury.
Fr, Chakaipa was trained in the seminary founded for African secular clergy in 1936 by the late Archbishop Aston Chichester, S.J.. who also founded a congregation of African sisters at a time when such developments were often regarded with great suspicion. The great 'chick's' act of faith was vindicated. The seminary had yielded 50 African priests and the sisters continue to flourish.
The new bishop is one of the best known novelists in the Shona language, and his texts are used in schools and for higher studies in the university. He is a national prizewinner. Ordained in 1965 he was for three years episcopal vicar at Mtoko, near the Portuguese border, and was responsible for -tin area stretching from Mtoko to Salisbury.