Pope Benedict XVI today announced the appointment of Bishop Joseph Coutts of Faisalabad as the new archbishop of Karachi. He will replace 78-year-old Archbishop Evarist Pinto, who headed the archdiocese since 2002. The 66-year-old new archbishop was born in 1945 in Amritsar, in today’s Punjab state, and ordained in Lahore in 1971. He moved to Hydarabad in 1988 as coadjutor bishop before becoming bishop two years later, following the death of his predecessor, Franciscan Bishop Bonaventure Patrick Paul. In 1998, then Pope John Paul II moved him to Faisalabad, where he succeeded Bishop John Joseph, who took his own life in protest against anti-Christian bias in Pakistan. Since March of last year, the archbishop-designate has served as president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Pakistan.