Côte d’Ivoire bishop transferred, named auxiliary bishop after fallout with clergy
February 20, 2026
In an unusual but not unprecedented move, Pope Leo XIV transferred a diocesan bishop in Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast, map) to another diocese and named him an auxiliary bishop there.
Pope Benedict XVI appointed Father Gaspard Béby Gnéba as bishop the Man in 2007, when he was only 44. Under Pope Francis, Bishop Gnéba simultaneously served as the apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Odienné from 2019 to 2022.
In January 2024, Bishop Gnéba said that “any lay faithful who knows that a Priest is not faithful to his celibacy, that he has a wife or a child, that he has committed sexual abuse or economic crimes, must have the courage to denounce him to the Bishop.” The ensuing fallout between bishop and clergy led to an apostolic visitation; in December 2024, Pope Francis appointed Cardinal Jean-Pierre Kutwa, who had recently retired as archbishop of Abidjan for reasons of age, as apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Man, while Bishop Gnéba remained bishop.
Pope Leo, in turn, named Bishop Gnéba the auxiliary bishop of Abidjan on February 19. Bishop Gnéba is now the sole auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Abidjan, which has 2,682,000 Catholics (Annuario Pontificio); by way of comparison, the Archdiocese of Chicago, with 1.95 million Catholics, has seven active auxiliary bishops.
Pope Leo’s decision is not unprecedented: Pope Francis made similar transfers in the United States in 2023 and in Ireland in 2024.
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