IMAGE DESCRIPTIONJeromeenriquez, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
LINKS
Vatican bio of Cardinal Ribat:
https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/documentation/cardinali_biografie/cardinali_bio_ribat_j.html
John Ribat on FIU's Cardinals Database (by Salvadore Miranda):
https://cardinals.fiu.edu/bios2016.htm#Ribat
Cardinal Ribat on Gcatholic.org:
http://www.gcatholic.org/p/2634
Cardinal Ribat on Catholic-Hierarchy.org:
https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bribat.html
Archdiocese of Port Moresby on Gcatholic.org:
http://www.gcatholic.org/dioceses/diocese/pmor0.htm?tab=info
Archdiocese of Port Moresby on Catholic-Hierarchy.org:
https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/dpomo.html
2020 Shalom World interview with Cardinal Ribat (English):
https://youtu.be/WVx49GdMB0M?si=qIm5ptARu0aEJfKv
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TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Popeular History, a library of Catholic knowledge and insights.
Check out the show notes for sources, further reading, and a transcript.
Today we're discussing another current Cardinal of the Catholic Church, one of the 120 or so people who will choose the next Pope when the time comes.
John RIBAT was born on February 9, 1957, in Volavolo, archdiocese of Rabaul, Papua New Guinea. As you may know, Papua New Guinea is an island nation, making John our fourth island-born Cardinal in a row, though Volavolo isn't actually on the island of New Guinea, instead, it’s on the northern end of New Britain, the nation's second largest island.
Ecologically, New Britain is that classic Oceanic mix of tropical rainforest and volcanos, to the extent that Rabaul, the provincial capital where John went to high school, now by and large sits under several meters of volcanic ash after a 1994 eruption. Don't worry, John was class of 70-something.
After a bit of minor seminary preparation, John signed up with the Congregation of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (M.S.C.)., a religious order founded in 1854 by a French priest. Of course, France is on the other side of the world from New Guinea, but “Missionaries” is right there in the name, and Rabaul and its volcano destroyed high school was actually their first oversees mission in 1882.
John did his first vows in 1979, and was ordained a priest for the Sacred Heart Missionaries in 1985. He did pastoral work for the next six years, then started serving as a master of novices after some supplemental training. He alternated those roles through the 90s, and in the year 2000 he was called up from his work- now in Fiji- to serve as the Auxiliary Bishop of Bereina on the main island in Papua New Guinea. In 2002 he dropped the Auxiliary part and became the full-on bishop of Bereina.
Spiritually, a strong majority of Papua New Guineans identify as Christian, with the Roman Catholics representing between a quarter and a third of the total population, depending on who you ask. Various forms of Protestantism make up a larger group when viewed collectively, though Catholicism is the largest single group. Though Christianity is dominant, traditional animist customs and ancestor worship are also common in the country operating under or sometimes on the surface.
In the case of the Bereina diocese, church records suggest a higher percentage of the local population is Catholic than the national average, over ⅔. In 2006 John Ribat was transferred to the capital see, running the Archdiocese of Port Moresby. According to my 2013 data, the first readily available during his tenure,
