Capra (Mauretania Caesariensis)
Roman-Berber town in present-day Algeria
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Capra was an ancient Roman–Berber town in the province of Mauretania Caesariensis. The civitas was located in the present-day area of Béni Mansour and Béni Abbès, Algeria. It was a bishopric in the Roman Catholic Church.
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Ecclesiastical history
Victor Vitensis speaks of Capra Picta as a town in that province, where some Catholics sent there into exile under the Arian Genseric, king of the Vandals from 428 to 477, converted a great number of the local population to Christianity.[1]
In the Notitia Provinciarum et Civitatum Africae,[2] Primus, bishop of the church in Capra, appears in the list of the Catholic bishops whom Huneric summoned to Carthage in 484 and then exiled.[3][1][4]
Titular see
No longer a residential bishopric, Capra is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see.[5]
The ancient diocese was nominally restored in 1933 and since had the following incumbents, both of the lowest (episcopal) or intermediary (archiepiscopal) ranks :
- Titular bishop Alain Sauveur Ferdinand van Gaver, Paris Foreign Missions Society M.E.P. (1965.03.22 – 1965.12.18)
- Titular archbishop Joseph Floribert Cornelis, Benedictine Order (O.S.B.) (1967.04.13 – 1974.11.13)
- Titular bishop Hieronymus Herculanus Bumbun, Capuchin Friars (O.F.M. Cap.) (1975.12.19 – 1977.02.26) (later Archbishop)
- Titular bishop Anatole Milandou (1983.07.22 – 1987.10.03) (later Archbishop)
- Titular bishop Camillus Archibong Etokudoh (1988.01.18 – 1989.09.01)
- Titular bishop Joseph Shipandeni Shikongo, Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate (O.M.I.) (1994.03.14 – ...), Apostolic Vicar of Rundu (Namibia)