On 27 December 1847, Aidan Devereux was consecrated, in Cape Town, Bishop of Paneas and first Vicar Apostolic of the Eastern Vicariate, by Griffith, under whom he had worked for nine years.
Through the Dhanis family of Belgium the new vicar Apostolic received the first considerable funds to start work.
Richards had already spent twenty-two years in the country and, whether as a writer, or lecturer, or pastor, had left his mark in the land.
He founded the Cape Colonist, a paper which had campaigning views on purity in public life and on the native problems.
Strobino was succeeded in 1896 by his coadjutor, Hugh MacSherry, formerly administrator of the diocese of Dundalk in Ireland, who had been consecrated a few months before.