Background
Bowers was born in Hampstead, Dominica, to Sheriff Montague Bowers (originally from Antigua) and his wife Mary.
Bowers was born in Hampstead, Dominica, to Sheriff Montague Bowers (originally from Antigua) and his wife Mary.
He was educated at the Dominica Grammar School, before traveling to the United States to attend Saint Augustine Seminary, in Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi.
He is credited with having tripled the Catholic population and parishes in Ghana and for substantially increasing the number of Catholic priests and religious laity in the Diocese of Accra. At the time of his death in Ghana, aged 102, he was the second-oldest Roman Catholic bishop and the oldest from the Caribbean. He was then appointed auxiliary bishop of Accra, Ghana, and Titular Bishop of Cyparissia.
Bowers was appointed Bishop of Accra on 8 January 1953, and received his episcopal consecration on 22 April 1953, from Cardinal Spellman at the Church of Our Lady of the Gulf in Bay Saint Louis, United States, becoming the first black bishop consecrated in the United States.
In 1957 Bowers founded the congregation of the Sisters of the Handmaids of the Divine Redeemer (High-Dose-Rate) in Accra, which was dedicated to caring and comforting the poor. In recognition and acknowledgement of his work in Ghana, when the diocese of Saint John"s-Basseterre in the West Indies was created in 1971 – comprising the islands of Antigua-Barbuda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Montserrat, Anguilla and the British Virgin Islands – Bowers was appointed its first bishop on 16 January 1971, becoming the chief pastor in Antigua.
In the 1990s the High-Dose-Rate Sisters, some of whom had periodically visited him in Dominica, invited him back to Ghana,where they cared for him in the town of Agomanya. At the celebrations there for his 100th birthday a guest was Nicholas Liverpool, president of Dominica.
Bowers died at the age of 102 on 5 November 2012, in Agomanya in the Eastern Region of Ghana.
He was buried at the Holy Spirit Cathedral, Accra.