sentences:  a professor of Theology at Capuchin College in Washington DC, was appointed the first ecclesiastical superior of the Capuchin Mission in the Southern Highlands.He was ordained a bishop on December 15, 1965 and became the first Ordinary of the Diocese of Mendi in 1966.A physically strong man from a Kansas farm family, Bishop Firmin, a Doctor of Theology with a great devotion to the Blessed Mother, did not volunteer for the missions.