Auxiliary Bishop in CAR Appointed Local Ordinary of Country’s Mbaiki Diocese

He added in reference to the Diocese of Bangassou, “In the cathedral we haven’t said Mass for four months because we have been housing 2,100 Muslim refugees that the anti-balaka want to kill. No State employee wants to come here. This is why we decided to celebrate my ordination in Bangui.”

In the 23 November 2017 interview with Alberto de la Portilla, Bishop Molina described his episcopal appointment as “a cold shower, practical icy, because I neither feel worthy nor find it humanly attractive.”

At the time of his appointment, Bishop Molina had been planning to return to Spain at the end of 2017 and work in Vocation Promotion, Justice and Peace while at the same time spending time with his aging parents, he revealed in the interview published on the website of the Comboni Lay Missionaries.

“Trusting in God, I said yes and this has completely changed my life, which is already tied to these people to the end in a sacramental way,” he said referencing his July 2017 episcopal appointment.

Asked about his love for the poor, the member of the Comboni Missionaries said, “This preferential option for the last, those who do not count, the discarded as the Pope says, comes from Jesus of Nazareth.”

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“Being the unsatisfied searcher that I am, curiously I discovered that it is in those who are despised by the world that we find the true face of God,” the Comboni Missionary said and added, “The poor, the humble, the hungry, those who cry, the persecuted, those who cry for justice… they are the Bible in the flesh.”

Still making reference to the poor, he continued, “I was given this great treasure of being able to serve them a little, and I am happy to be the one who greatly benefits from it, because it is the poor who give me God.”

In the interview, Bishop Molina decried what he termed an “underhanded neocolonialism (that) is taking over Africa today,” a situation he said was characterized by world’s powers “unscrupulously fighting over its riches, causing wars, destroying cultures, exterminating entire populations.”

“But Africa is life with capital L. The origin of humankind is in Africa and I dare to say that its future passes through Africa,” he said in the November 2017 interview.

Erected in June 1995, CAR’s Diocese of Mbaiki is under the Ecclesiastical Province of Bangui.

In Mbaiki Diocese, which is under the patronage of St. Joan of Arc, Comboni Missionary Bishop Molina will oversee the pastoral care of an estimated 130,000 Catholics spread across 26,225 square kilometers according to 2018 statistics.