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The mortal remains of Bishop Emeritus Joseph Oliver Bowers, a retired bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Accra, who died last Tuesday has been interred at the Holy Spirit Cathedral. Bishop Oliver Bowers died at the age of 102 in the early hours of Tuesday November 6, 2012, in Agomanya in the Eastern Region. Concelebrating with Most Rev. Charles Gabriel Palmer Buckle, Archbishop of Accra, Most Rev. Gabriel Kumordji, Bishop of Donkorkrom said the late Bishop listened to the voice of God and followed him. He said Bishop Bowers gave himself totally to serve God thereby leaving his home nation South USA to Ghana since 1963. �Whatever you do on earth, your deeds will follow you. The good works of Bishop Bowers will surely follow him,� he added. Recounting how the bishop died, Bishop Kumordji said, the Catholic Bishops Conference visited Bishop Bowers on his sick bed on November 2, 2012, and consequently blessed him, and he blessed them in return. President John Dramani Mahama, who was at the burial service, thanked the church for their great contribution in the area of health and education. He urged the clergy to continue to correct government officials anytime they went wayward. President Mahama pledged his commitment to maintain peace in the country. In attendance were priests, reverend brothers and sisters, government officials, superiors and provincials of the Priestly Order and the lay faithful. Bishop Bowers was born on March 28, in Massacre, Dominican Republic. He travelled to the United States to attend St. Augustine Seminary, in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. He was ordained on January 22, 1939, and continued as a priest in the Society of the Divine Word from 1939 to 1952. He was appointed auxiliary Bishop of Accra, and Titular Bishop of Cyparissia. Bishop Bowers was appointed Bishop of Accra on January 8, 1953, and received his Episcopal consecration on April 22, 1953, from Cardinal Spellman at the Church of Our Lady of the Gulf in Bay St. Louis, USA, becoming the first black bishop to be so ordained in the USA. In 1957, Bishop Bowers founded the congregation of the Sisters of the Handmaids of the Divine Redeemer (HDR) in Accra, which is dedicated to caring and comforting the poor. He also founded the St. John College and Seminary presently known as Pope John Senior High School and Minor Seminary, one of the best high schools in Ghana. In recognition and acknowledgement of his pioneering work in Ghana, when the Diocese of St. John�s-Basseterre in the West Indies was created in 1971�comprising the Islands of Antigua-Barbuda, St. Kitts and Nevis, Montserrat, Anguilla and the British Virgin Islands�Bishop Bowers was appointed as its first bishop on January 16, 1971, becoming the chief pastor in Antigua. On July 17, 1981, he retired from church office and after some years spent in Charlestown, Nevis, returned to Dominica, where he lived in Mahaut in the care of his sister, Blossom Ann Reid. In the 1990s the HDR Sisters, some of whom had periodically visited him in Dominica, invited him back to Ghana, where he lived with them until he died on Tuesday. The occasion was also used to bury Rev. Brother Samuel Alfred Adjei of the Society of Divine Word Missionaries (SVD) who died in Chile.