Francesco Pio Attard, editor of the Gozo Parish Magazine – Il-Hajja f’Ghawdex – recently interviewed Bishop Mgr. Giovanni Cefai MSSP during his visit to Gozo, which can be seen in the video below.
Bishop Mgr. Giovanni Cefai was born on the 5th of August 1967 in Zebbug, Gozo and after a course of Mechanical Engineering at the Technical Institute of Gozo, at the age of seventeen he joined the Missionary Society of St. Paul, which has evangelisation as its main Missionary Charism.
He gave his solemn vows in 1994, and was ordained a priest in 1997. Bishop Cefai holds a licentiate in pastoral theology from the University of Malta.
He has served in a number of pastoral roles, including director of the De Piro youth centre in Malta and parish priest of Santa Cruz and San Pablo Apóstol in Arequipa, Peru.
In 2010 he was appointed regional superior of the Missionary Society of Saint Paul in Peru, where he served for three consecutive terms, nine years altogether.
Mgr Cefai was appointed by Pope Francis in April [1] as the first bishop of the territorial prelature of Apóstol de Huancané, Peru.
The Episcopal consecration [2] of Mgr. Giovanni Cefai MSSP took place on the 22nd of June, at the Arequipa Cathedral, Peru.
He was the first of the Missionary of the Society of St. Paul, and the first from the small village of Zebbug in Gozo.
The territorial Prelatura of Santiago Apostol de Huancané, is formed of twenty parishes in which just over 200,000 people live, with about 85% of them Catholics.
In the territory, there are fifteen priest spread over eighteen thousand square metres of land.
Photo: Mallia Baskal and Film/editing: Joe Grech