Samuel Naceno Agcaracar
Samuel Naceno Agcaracar, SVD, was born December 4, 1969, in Claveria, Cagayan, in the Diocese of Tuguegarao, to a family of farmers; he began as a teacher and catechist in his home parish before entering the Society of the Divine Word. He studied at the Divine Word College of Bangued, graduating with a bachelor's degree in History of Religious Education, and at the Divine Word College of Laoag, where he obtained a master's degree in education; he studied philosophy at Christ the King Mission Seminary in Quezon City and theology at the Divine Word School of Theology in Tagaytay, and was awarded a doctorate in missiology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in 2018. His episcopal motto is Fac Nos Omnes Unum in Eo, 'Make us one in Him' (John 17:21).
He entered the novitiate on June 1, 2001, in Calapan, took first vows on June 2, 2002, in Tagaytay, and made perpetual vows on May 14, 2006, in Tagaytay, on the feast of St. Matthias. He was ordained a priest on February 3, 2007, in Tagaytay, by Gaudencio Rosales. He served as Regent of Good Shepherd in Magsaysay from 2004 to 2005, as Director of Education at the Divine Word College in Calapan from 2007 to 2008, as Professor at the Divine Word Seminary in Tagaytay from 2011 to 2014, as Professor at the Divine Word Institute of Mission Studies and the Divine Word Seminary from 2018 to 2020, as Guest Professor at the Pontifical University of Sto. Tomas and the Institute of Consecrated Life in Asia, as Rector of the Divine Word Seminary in Tagaytay since 2020, as Councilor of the SVD Philippine Central Province from 2020 to 2023, as Vice-Provincial since 2024, and as provincial admonitor of the same province. He is the founder and executive director of the SVD Laudato Si' Farm in Tagaytay, an integrated, community-led agricultural project that transformed idle hectares into a model of sustainable food production, opened to the public in 2021.
Pope Leo XIV appointed him Bishop of San Jose in Nueva Ecija on November 21, 2025, as the diocese's fifth bishop, succeeding Roberto Mallari, transferred to Tarlac, after a vacancy of nearly eight months. He was ordained bishop on January 17, 2026, at the Holy Spirit Chapel of the Divine Word Seminary in Tagaytay, with Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle as principal consecrator and Apostolic Nuncio Charles John Brown and Bishop Pablito Martinez Tagura, SVD, Vicar Apostolic of San Jose in Mindoro, as co-consecrators, and was installed on February 6, 2026, at the Cathedral-Parish of St. Joseph the Worker in San Jose City, by Nuncio Brown, with Archbishop Socrates Villegas. January 17, 2026, is the episcopal ordination; February 6, 2026, is the installation; the two dates are different events.
No decree, permission, suppression, expansion, or transfer of the Traditional Latin Mass by Bishop Agcaracar in San Jose in Nueva Ecija was found in the searches listed.
His public record in the window is the Laudato Si' work and the pastoral priorities above, not a liturgical act; nothing found here is coded as a governing act on the 1962 Missal.