The appointment of Monsignor Pierre Suon Hangly was made public on June 28 through a communiqué from the Apostolic Nunciature, which covers Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.
A Coadjutor Vicar, also known as a Coadjutor Bishop, is a bishop in the Catholic Church who is appointed to assist the diocesan bishop and automatically succeeds him upon his retirement, resignation, or death.
Hangly, 53, is the third native Cambodian priest appointed to a top position in the local Church after Paul Tep Im Sotha, former Apostolic Prefect of Battambang, and Bishop Joseph Chhmar Salas, former Apostolic Vicar of Phnom Penh.
Salas served as the Apostolic Vicar of Phnom Penh from 1975-77 before being detained by the ultra-Maoist Khmer Rouge, which brutally persecuted religious minorities.
The Khmer Rouge regime is accused of the deaths of about two million Cambodians from 1975 to 1979 before being overthrown by the Vietnamese forces.
Both Sotha and Salas died of exhaustion in a Khmer Rouge labor camp.
In 2015, the Cambodian Church initiated the process for their beautification as martyrs for faith.
Pope Francis appointed Hangly as the apostolic prefect of Kampong Cham. He succeeded Indian-born Bishop Antonysamy Susairaj of the Paris Foreign Mission Society (MEP).
French MEP Bishop Olivier Schmitthaeusler has been serving as the apostolic vicar of Phnom Penh since 2010.
Hangly’s appointment is the first for a native priest to a high-ranking Church position in Cambodia after the local Church rose from the ashes after the Khmer Rouge persecution, thanks to efforts by foreign missionaries, particularly MEP.
Hangly was born on April 14, 1972, three years before the Khmer Rouge took over Cambodia. He was ordained a priest in 2001.
After ordination, he was assigned to provide pastoral service in Kampo-Kep and Takeo (2001-2007). He obtained a licentiate in theology, specializing in spirituality, at the Institut Catholique de Paris, France, in 2015.
He served as the rector of the Saint Jean Marie Vianney National Major Seminary from 2015-2017, parish priest of Saint Peter and Paul in Phnom-Penh from 2015-2022, pro-vicar of the apostolic vicariate of Phnom-Penh from 2017-2022, before becoming the apostolic prefect of Kampong Cham.
Catholics are a tiny minority, accounting for less than one percent of the Buddhist-majority nation’s estimated 18 million people.
Cambodian Catholic Church is composed of three jurisdictions: the Apostolic Vicariate of Phnom Penh, the Apostolic Prefecture of Battambang, and the Apostolic Prefecture of Kampong Cham.