Arthur Luysterman

Arthur Luysterman (born 18 March 1932) is a Belgian Roman Catholic Bishop. He served as the twenty-ninth Bishop of Ghent between 1991 and 2003.

Life Arthur Luysterman was born in Meerbeke, a village in the intensively developed countryside between Ghent and Brussels. He was the eldest of his parents' four children.

He attended school locally, obtaining a grounding in Graeco-Latin humanities at the St Aloysius College in Ninove and Our Lady's College, Dendermonde before abandoning an earlier ambition to become a lawyer and entering the seminary of Ghent in 1950: he was ordained into the priesthood on 26 August 1956.

He received a degrees and a doctorate in Canon law from the Catholic University of Louvain in 1959.

He was the founder of the Fund for Church Buildings in the Diocese of Ghent. During his time the number of seminarians declined and the episcopal seminary was closed, but he insisted that the quality of candidates for ordination was more important than their quantity. On 11 October 2003 he was principal consecrator for Cardinal Joos.

After reaching the age of 70, Arthur Luysterman offered his resignation to the pope. This was accepted on 19 December 2003. Since then, as an emeritus bishop, he has nevertheless continued as a member of the Belgian Bishops' Conference.