On Sunday, January 30, the See of the Diocese of Paramaribo ceased to be vacant. Msgr Wilhelmus Adrianus Josephus Maria de Bekker was ordained bishop at the Cathedral of Sts Peter & Paul and thus became the third Bishop of Paramaribo.

Due to the fact that no bishop of the Antilles speaks Dutch, Msgr Adrianus van Luyn, Bishop of Rotterdam, was asked to be chief consecrator at the ordination ceremony.

However, both Archbishop Edward Gilbert of Port-of-Spain and Archbishop Lawrence Burke of Kingston were co-consecrators. Other bishops present were: Archbishop Michel Méranville of St Pierre & Fort-de-France, Bishop Malcolm Galt of Bridgetown, Bishop Emmanuel Lafont of Cayenne, Bishop Francis Alleyne of Georgetown, Bishop Gabriel Malzaire of Roseau, Emeritus Bishop Paul Boyle, Bishop Robert Rivas of Kingstown and Bishop Donald Reece of St John's-Basseterre.

Also present were the President of the Republic, several ministers and members of the Diplomatic Corps. Even the Minister of Development Cooperation of the Netherlands was present at the ceremony.

The presence of members of the Christian Council, as well as board members of the other Christian denominations and representatives from the Jewish, the Hindu and Muslim communities, gave the ceremony a special ecumenical character.

Bishop de Bekker succeeds Bishop Aloysius Zichem, who resigned as Bishop of Paramaribo in 2003, after he suffered a stroke at the beginning of that year, which impeded his speech and mobility. The whole congregation present at the ceremony broke out in spontaneous applause when Msgr Zichem entered the cathedral.

At the end of the ordination rites, Msgr Zichem handed the crozier over to the newly ordained bishop, thereby symbolically handing over the care of the faithful of the Diocese of Paramaribo into the hands of Msgr de Bekker. The crozier originally belonged to Msgr Jacobus Grooff, who received it at his Episcopal ordination in 1825 when he became the first Apostolic Vicar of Suriname.

Wilhelmus de Bekker was born on April 27the, 1939, in Helmond , the Netherlands , and came to Suriname in 1976 as an anthropologist on a research mission. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1985.