Don Bosco Past Pupil Fr. John Lee is Tainan’s New Bishop

By Fr. Lanfranco M. Fedrigotti, SDB

Taipei - Taiwan, 15 November 2020 -- Today, at 12:01 p.m. Rome time (19:01 hours Taipei time), the Salesian Community of St. John Bosco Parish in Taipei, was happy to experience a doubly episcopal event: during the supper, Salesian Cooperator and Salesian Past Pupil Taipei Archbishop Thomas Chung An Zu, on a friendly visit to the Community, announced that Pope Francis has appointed as new Bishop of Tainan 54-year old Fr. John Lee, also a Don Bosco past pupil of Salesian Technical School in Tainan. All we Salesians were overjoyed to hear the news and, together with Archbishop Thomas, immediately toasted to the health of this new successor of the Apostles.

Bishop-elect John Lee was a student in the car-repair department of our school in Tainan in the years 1981-1984. During his third year, his assistant was 1st year practical-trainee Sc. Joseph Ng Chi Yuen, the present CIN Provincial. For his priestly ordination, Fr. John Lee chose the school hall of Salesian Technical School, where he was ordained with two companions on 1st January, 1993. His priestly ordination took place just one day before the episcopal consecration of Bishop Bosco Lin as Auxiliary Bishop of Kaohsiung (2 January 1993). Bishop-elect John Lee is now the successor of Bishop Bosco Lin. In fact, Bishop Bosco Lin was appointed Bishop of Tainan on January 24, 2004, and installed as Bishop of Tainan on 21 March the same year.

77-year old Bishop Bosco (so named at his baptism by the German missionary Fr. Ferdinand Pauli OP long before the Salesians arrived in Taiwan!) can now finally retire, after 26 years of dedicated apostolic service to us all. As a Salesian Cooperator (like Archbishop Thomas of Taipei), Bishop Bosco has been particularly close to us Salesians in Tainan. Thank you, dear Bishop Bosco!

Bishop Bosco’s successor, Bishop-elect Fr. John Lee, a good singer and guitar player, for many years has been the youth pastoral and vocation pastoral animator of the Tainan Diocese, often working closely with the SDB of Salesian Technical School. To the new Bishop we Salesians of Taiwan wish the best, praying for the abundant fruitfulness of his apostolic service to the beloved Diocese of Tainan, since 1963 the host of our first Salesian presence in Taiwan.

During the Good Night Talk after the sung First Vespers of Sunday, Archbishop Thomas Chung had announced to the community that, with the consent of the CIN Provincial, he had appointed our Vice-Rector Parish Pastor Fr. Edgar Andrew Carbon as Spiritual Director of the Archdiocese Youth Office.

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