Fr. Dave Dean Capucao, 59, has been appointed as the new bishop of the Prelature of Infanta, making him the first Filipino appointee of Pope Leo XIV, according to the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) News.
Capucao will succeed retired Bishop Bernardino Cortez, who led the prelature since January 2015. Cortez’s resignation was accepted by the pope following his 75th birthday in July 2024, in line with the mandatory resignation age for bishops under the 1966 apostolic letter Ecclesiae Sanctae by Pope Paul VI.
Ordained in 1994 for the Infanta prelature, Capucao served as the founding pastor of a village parish in a poor area of Aurora province for six years. He also holds a master’s degree in intercultural and interreligious theology from Radboud University (formerly Catholic University of Nijmegen).