Philippe Jean-Charles Jourdan
Philippe Jean-Charles Jourdan is a Roman Catholic dignitary, Apostolic Administrator of Estonia and Titular Bishop of Pertusa.
Philippe Jourdan is of Basque origin. After his secondary education in Dax and preparatory classes at the Louis le Grand College in Paris, he pursued a degree in mathematics, physics and highway engineering at the École nationale des ponts et chaussées in Paris. He became a member of Opus Dei as a student. After being called to priesthood, he completed his theological studies at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross and was ordained as a priest in the by Cardinal Bernard Francis Law on 20 August 1988. As a priest of the Prelature of Opus Dei, of which he has been a member since 1980, he then practised his ministry in Paris from 1988 to 1996, mainly as a student chaplain.
He was appointed a Vicar General of the Apostolic Administration of Estonia in 1996. The Apostolic Administration was at that time governed by the Apostolic Nuncio from Lithuania and the Vicar General was the highest Church official residing permanently in Estonia. From 1999 to 2001 Father Jourdan served also as a parochial vicar of the Cathedral of Sts. Paul and Peter in Tallinn.
On 23 March 2005 he was appointed titular Bishop of Pertusa and Apostolic Administrator of Estonia by Pope John Paul II, becoming the second Catholic bishop in Estonia since the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century. Jourdan's predecessor Eduard Profittlich, S.J. died in 1942 as a martyr in a Soviet prison.
He was consecrated and installed as ordinary of Estonia on 10 September 2005 in Tallinn by Archbishop Peter Stephan Zurbriggen, Apostolic Nuncio to the Baltic states. Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz of Moscow and Bishop Javier Echevarría, prelate of Opus Dei, were the two co-consecrating bishops at the episcopal consecration and installation. In 2013 he became a member of the Council of European Bishops' Conferences, as the representative of Estonia.
Philippe Jourdan speaks in addition to his native French fluent Estonian, Russian, English, Italian, Spanish, German and Polish. He is completing a doctorate in analytical philosophy at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross.
