Catholic Bishop of DR. Congo’s Kabinda Diocese Appointed Archbishop for Kananga

He obtained a Baccalaureate in Civil Law from the Jesuit Notre Dame de la Paix Catholic University in Namur, Belgium, in 2009.

The Congolese Archbishop-elect also holds a Master’s degree in Civil Law from the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve and a Master’s degree in Human Rights from the Faculty of Law Saint Louis in Brussels.

As a Priest, he served in various capacities including Provincial Secretary and Rector of the Scheutist Missionaries in Kinshasa; Director of the Pedagogical Research Center in Kinshasa; and Secretary of the Provincial Commission for Finance of the Scheutists, among other responsibilities.

He had his missionary and pastoral internship in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Mongolia and since December 2022, he has been serving as the Apostolic Administrator of Kananga Archdiocese.

Archbishop-elect Kasembe is expected to become the eighth Local Ordinary of the 33,000 square Kilometre Metropolitan See that was erected in March 2004 as the Vicariate Apostolic of Belgian Congo before being elevated to Archdiocese in August 1972.

The Archdiocese that has Kabinda, Kole, Luebo Luiza, Mbujimayi,  Mweka, Tshilomba, and Tshumbe as suffragan Dioceses has 2,531,995 Catholics, representing 59.6 percent of the Metropolitan See’s  total population, according to 2021 statistics.