Yesterday, the eve of his 100th Easter, Bishop André Sol, the sixth-oldest bishop in the world and the oldest Dutch bishop, returned to the Father.
Bishop Andreas Petrus Cornelius Sol was the last surviving Dutch-born prelate to have participated in the Second Vatican Council, taking part in the third and fourth sessions. A priest of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, he was ordained in 1940, travelling, after the war ended in 1945, to the Catholic Kai Islands in the Moluccas in what was then the Dutch East Indies. In 1963 he was appointed as Coadjutor Bishop of the Diocese of Amboina, and in 1965 he succeeded Bishop Jacobus Grent, also a Dutchman, as the second bishop of that diocese. Bishop Sol retired in 1994.
Bishop Sol remained in Ambon after his retirement. In 2004 he had to flee sectarian violence in the city, but he returned later and died yesterday in the city that became his home. He leaves behind an extensive library attached to the cathedral of Amboina, as well as the Ambon Adoption Project, which has allowed thousands of children in the Mollucas to receive an education through sponsorships from financial adoption parents in the Netherlands since its inception in 1980.
In Caelo et in Terra 
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