New York Jesuit who was bishop of Caroline Islands Diocese dies

Published: 2004-04-16

NEW YORK (CNS) -- Bishop Martin J. Neylon, a New York Jesuit who served a quarter-century as bishop of the Caroline Islands in the Pacific, died April 13 at the Jesuit provincial infirmary in New York. He was 84 years old. His funeral Mass was to be celebrated April 19 at St. Ignatius Loyola Church in New York. Bishop Neylon was named coadjutor bishop of what was then the Apostolic Vicariate of the Caroline-Marshall Islands in November 1969 and ordained a bishop the following February. In 1971 he became apostolic vicar upon the retirement of his predecessor, Bishop Vincent I. Kennally. He oversaw the elevation of the vicariate, which covered more than 2 million square miles of ocean but only about 400 square miles of land, to a diocese in 1979. In 1993 he oversaw the division of the diocese into the Diocese of the Caroline Islands and the Apostolic Prefecture of the Marshall Islands.

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