Pope's first episcopal appointment - Bishop with wonderful Marian vocation and who wants to be and continue Mary's presence in the world and in the Church.....

Marist Miguel Ángel Contreras Llajaruna in Callao, first episcopal appointment of Leo XIV

Father Contreras Llajaruna is superior of the Marist District of South America.

Pope Leo XIV made his first episcopal appointment as Pope this Thursday, in the person of Father Miguel Ángel Contreras Llajaruna, superior of the Marist District of South America, the Congregation to which he belongs. He has been appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Callao, Peru, to assist the titular bishop, Luis Alberto Barrera Pacheco, in his duties.

The Pope is well acquainted with the diocese, having served as its Apostolic Administrator between April 2020 and May 2021, during the interregnum between the previous Bishop, José Luis del Palacio, of Spain, and the current one. Contreras was currently the Episcopal Vicar for Consecrated Life in that diocese.

Pope Robert Prevost was the Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops until his election, so it is likely that he will make appointments in the coming days that he was already working on with the Nunciatures.

The "Style of Mary"

Born in 1979 in Cajabamba, Cajamarca, Father Contreras studied philosophy at the Juan XXIII Higher Institute of Theological Studies in Lima, and theology at the Cristo Resucitado Salesian Theological Institute in Guadalajara, Mexico. He later earned a degree in Sacred Scripture from the Jesuit Faculty of Philosophy and Theology in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and a master's degree in Educational Management and Administration from Marcelino Champagnat University in Lima.

He was ordained a priest in 2008 and served in various parish ministries in the Diocese of Callao.

"My vocation arose from my family," he explained in a 2020 interview, and through the contact he had at his public school "with a deacon... I asked myself why I couldn't do what he was doing, which was serving the people and holding liturgical celebrations."

He met the Marists through a classmate, whose brothers worked at a school of the congregation founded by Saint Marcellin Champagnat (1789-1840). They invited him to spend time with them: "After this encounter and accompaniment, I decided to continue the formation process."

Father Contreras explains the Marist vocation as a lifestyle based on "sharing... in Mary's own style": it is "being and continuing Mary's presence in the world and in the Church, serving through ministries, education, or parishes."

"We seek to transmit God through the classroom, catechesis, various pastoral programs, and liturgical action," he adds. "For us, education is a ministry, not a job," so that, "through education," and "in the adverse situations that families experience, whether personal or economic, we try to be an instrument of mercy to bring them closer to God from that situation."

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