Bishop Karel Marinus Choennie

Bishop Karel Marinus Choennie, Bishop of Paramaribo, was born on December 20, 1958, in Paramaribo, in Suriname. He studied at the Catholic University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands, where he took an undergraduate degree in pedagogy, read theology at the University of the West Indies, and made his priestly formation at the regional seminary of St. John Vianney at Port of Spain, afterwards obtaining a licentiate in pastoral theology at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. He was ordained a deacon on September 9, 1984, and he was ordained a priest on September 30, 1985. He served as parish priest of Mary Queen of the Universe in Paramaribo from 1985 to 1994, of St. Clement's in Paramaribo from 1994 to 1996, and of St. Boniface from 1997 to 2001, returning to St. Clement's from 1999. He was a member of the diocesan curia from 1997, episcopal vicar of the Diocese of Paramaribo from 2003 to 2005, with responsibility for the department for faith, culture and communication, and from 2005 vicar general of the diocese and parish priest of St. Alphonsus. On November 11, 2015, he was appointed Bishop of Paramaribo. He received episcopal ordination on January 24, 2016, with Wilhelmus Adrianus Josephus Maria de Bekker as principal consecrator and Joseph Everard Harris and Patrick Christopher Pinder as co-consecrators.