On the Sunday of Orthodoxy, 13th March 2011, His Beatitude Theodoros II, Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa, consecrated the Very Reverend Archimandrite Innocent Byakatonda to the office of Patriarchal Vicar in South Sudan during the Divine Liturgy at the Holy Church of St Antony the Great in Monte, Uganda, in the presence of their Eminences the Synodal Metropolitans Jonah of Kampala and Ieronymos of Mwanza.
The new Patriarchal Vicar of South Sudan, the Very Reverend Archimandrite Innocent Byakatonda, was born in Uganda in 1964 and speaks Greek. He studied at the Seminary of St Matthew in Chania in Crete and also studied Theology and the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki, completing his post graduate studies in Pastoral Advisory Theology. His post graduate studies in Patristics were continued at the Theological College in Boston and those of Advisory Psychology at the Seminary of St Tykhon in Pennsylvania, USA.
He was ordained to the Diaconate and as Priest-Archimandrite by the late Patriarch Petros VII at the Patriarchal Church of St Savvas the Sanctified in Alexandria. He is the Academic Dean of the Patriarchal Academy in Kenya “Archbishop Makarios III of Cyprus” and Vice Rector of the Orthodox College in Kenya. He is also the Parish priest of the Patriarchal Church of the Holy Unmercenaries in Nairobi.
His Eminence Metropolitan Jonah of Kampala will undertake the responsibility of the formation of the Orthodox Church in South Sudan, following the creation of the new Christian state, so that thereafter the Very Reverend Innocent can serve there as new Patriarchal Vicar.
