Baccay appointed head of Tuguegarao archdiocese

TUGUEGARAO CITY—Pope Francis has appointed Bishop Ricardo Baccay as new head of the Archdiocese of Tuguegarao, which has jurisdiction over the Catholic’s ecclesiastical parishes in Cagayan Valley.

Baccay will succeed Archbishop Sergio Utleg, who resigned a year after he reached the mandatory retirement age of 75. Utleg served the archdiocese for eight years.

A bishop of Alaminos City since 2016, Baccay, 58, will be the eighth archbishop of Tuguegarao. In 2007, he was appointed auxiliary bishop of Tuguegarao.

Nine years later, he was transferred as bishop of Alaminos. Within the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, Baccay has been serving as chair of the Commission on Bioethics. —VILLAMOR VISAYA JR.