Pope Benedict XVI appointed Father Raymond Wickramasinghe as the new Bishop of Galle, a diocese hard hit by the 2004 tsunami. Father Wickramasinghe, 48, is a moral theology professor at the National Seminary of Our Lady of Lanka. He succeeds Bishop Harold Anthony Perera, who was named Bishop of Kurunegala about two years ago. The bishop-designate was ordained priest in 1989 and holds a doctorate in Moral Theology from Rome. Galle diocese in southern Sri Lanka has less than 10,000 Catholics out of 2.2 million people. Thousands were killed in Galle that was devastated by the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami caused by an earthquake just off the coast of Indonesia. It killed over 230,000 people in 14 countries, about 40,000 of them in Sri Lanka.