VATICAN—Pope Leo XIV on Friday made his first appointment of a Filipino bishop, naming Fr. Dave Dean Capucao as the new shepherd of the Prelature of Infanta.
Capucao, 59, will be the fourth prelate of Infanta, succeeding retired Bishop Bernardino Cortez, who had led the prelature since January 2015.
The pope accepted Cortez’s resignation, which he submitted upon turning 75 in July 2024 — the age at which bishops are required to offer their resignation under Ecclesiae Sanctae, the 1966 apostolic letter by Pope Paul VI.
Ordained a priest for the Infanta prelature on Oct. 3, 1994, Capucao was immediately appointed founding pastor of a village parish in a poor area of Aurora province, where he served for six years.
In 2000, he was sent to the Netherlands to study at the Catholic University of Nijmegen, now Radboud University, where he earned a master’s degree in intercultural and interreligious theology two years later.
From 2002 to 2006, he worked as a junior researcher at the university’s theology faculty. During that time, he began work on a dissertation on religion and ethnocentrism, which he defended in 2009.
Starting in 2006, Capucao also began parish work in the Netherlands. In 2007, he was appointed a member of the pastoral team of Saint Ludger Parish in the area of Lichtenvoorde and Winterswijk.
The bishop-elect also holds a doctorate in sacred theology from the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium.
Capucao returned to the Philippines in 2011 and served as a formator at the prelature’s St. Joseph Formation House (SJFH) in Quezon City.
In 2015, he was appointed rector of SJFH. He has also taught at various universities and theological institutions.
In 2021, Cortez named him superintendent of the Catholic Association of Schools in the Prelature of Infanta (CASPI).
Capucao currently serves as president of the Center for Empirical Studies on Spirituality, Theology and Religion–Asia (CESSTREL-ASIA).
He is also a member of the prelature’s Presbyteral Council and other international organizations, including The Netherlands School for Advanced Studies in Theology and Religion (NOSTER), and the International Society of Empirical Research in Theology (ISERT).
