Bishop Peter Abir Antonysamy

Bishop Peter Abir Antonysamy, Bishop of Sultanpet, was born on October 14, 1951, at Sathipattu, in the Archdiocese of Pondicherry and Cuddalore. He studied at the R.C. elementary school of Sathipattu and at St. Joseph's Higher Secondary School in Cuddalore, and afterwards at St. Joseph's College in Trichy. In 1970 he entered the St. Agnes minor seminary at Cuddalore, and from 1971 to 1979 he studied at the Sacred Heart Seminary of Poonamallee, in Chennai. He was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Pondicherry and Cuddalore on May 1, 1979. He was parish assistant at Athipakkam from 1979 to 1981, and from 1981 to 1983 he took a master's degree in biblical theology at St. Peter's Pontifical Institute in Bangalore. He was secretary to the archbishop and chancellor of the curia from 1983 to 1984, professor of sacred scripture at the Good Shepherd Seminary in Coimbatore from 1984 to 1986, and parish priest at Kurumbagaram from 1986 to 1987, and from 1985 to 1987 he took a master's degree in literature and history at the University of Tirupati. He was director of St. Paul's Bible Institute at Poonamallee from 1987 to 1990, and from 1990 to 1996 he studied in Rome, residing at the Pontifical College of St. Peter the Apostle, taking a licentiate in sacred scripture at the Pontifical Biblical Institute and then a doctorate in sacred scripture at the Pontifical Gregorian University. He was again director of St. Paul's Bible Institute from 1996 to 2004, vice-secretary of the Tamil Nadu Bishops' Council from 2002 to 2004, South Asian coordinator of the Catholic Biblical Federation from 2002 to 2008, and director of the Tamil Nadu Biblical, Catechetical and Liturgical Centre from 2004 to 2010. From 2010 he was director of the Emmaus Spirituality Centre at Sithanagur, which he had founded in 2004. On December 28, 2013, the Diocese of Sultanpet was erected from the Dioceses of Coimbatore and Calicut as a suffragan of the metropolitan see of Verapoly, and he was appointed its first bishop. He received episcopal ordination on February 16, 2014, with Salvatore Pennacchio as principal consecrator and Francis Kallarakal and Thomas Aquinas Lephonse as co-consecrators. He served as Apostolic Administrator of Pondicherry and Cuddalore from January 27, 2021, until April 29, 2022.