Pope Leo XIV has appointed this Wednesday, October 21, Leandro Machado Silvestre as the new bishop of Guajará-Mirim, a diocese located in the state of Rondônia, in the Brazilian Amazon. The priest, 48 years old, has an extensive background in priestly formation and until now served as vicar general of the archdiocese of Porto Velho, where he carried out his ministry as a Fidei Donum missionary.
The appointment, announced by the Holy See, ends nearly a year of vacancy in Guajará-Mirim, a diocese bordering Bolivia that encompasses vast Amazonian territories and communities of difficult access.
Machado Silvestre arrives at the episcopate after having worked for the last three years in the archdiocese led by Roque Paloschi, one of the Brazilian prelates linked to the Amazonian synodal process and ecclesial initiatives related to indigenous peoples.
Almost a decade leading a seminary
Leandro Machado Silvestre was born on April 7, 1978, in Itaquaquecetuba, a municipality in the state of São Paulo belonging to the diocese of Mogi das Cruzes. He studied Philosophy and Theology at the Paulo VI Faculty and received priestly ordination on March 28, 2004, becoming incardinated in that same diocese.
His ministry began closely tied to the formation of future priests. In 2004 he was appointed vice-rector of the Seminary of Philosophy and Theology of Mogi das Cruzes and, the following year, assumed the rectorship, a responsibility he held until 2014.
During that period he combined his formative duties with various parish responsibilities. He served as parochial vicar and later as administrator of Saint Peter the Apostle, in César de Souza, as well as pastor of Saint Benedict.
Between 2014 and 2015 he served as diocesan treasurer and procurator, adding to his trajectory responsibilities related to the economic administration of the local Church.
He was also pastor of Our Lady of the Rosary, in Mogi das Cruzes, between 2014 and 2023, and in solidum pastor of the Holy Apostles, in Itaquaquecetuba, between 2016 and 2023.
His arrival in the Amazon and his collaboration with Roque Paloschi
In 2023, Machado Silvestre left the state of São Paulo to join the archdiocese of Porto Velho, in Rondônia, as a Fidei Donum priest, where he began a new stage of his ministry in the Amazonian region.
Since then he has served as pastor of Saint Christopher and, from 2024, as spiritual director of the Major Seminary. In January 2026 he also assumed the position of vicar general of the archdiocese.
During these years he has worked under the authority of Archbishop Roque Paloschi, former president of the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI), an organization linked to the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil.
Paloschi has played a prominent role in Amazonian pastoral care and in debates on the evangelization of indigenous peoples, the defense of their territories, and the guidelines arising from the 2019 Synod for the Amazon.
The Archbishop of Porto Velho has been linked to ecclesial structures that promoted the Amazonian synodal process, characterized by proposals for pastoral renewal, inculturation, and reorganization of ministries in the region.
Machado Silvestre’s experience in Porto Velho constitutes his main pastoral link with the Amazon. The biography released by the Holy See does not include any statements by the new bishop on the more controversial proposals of that synodal process.
A diocese bordering Bolivia
The diocese of Guajará-Mirim, located in western Rondônia, along the border with Bolivia, belongs to the ecclesiastical province of Porto Velho.
Its territory includes urban, rural, and indigenous communities, in a region where great distances and communication difficulties condition pastoral care and the regular presence of priests.
The ecclesiastical jurisdiction was established as a territorial prelature in 1929 and later elevated to a diocese during the pontificate of John Paul II.
The new bishop succeeds Benedito Araújo, who was transferred in November 2025 to the diocese of Campo Maior, in the state of Piauí. Since then, Guajará-Mirim has remained under the provisional administration of a diocesan administrator. In this context, Machado Silvestre will assume the governance of this diocese after having dedicated a significant part of his ministry to priestly formation and having gained pastoral and governance experience in Porto Velho, one of the archdioceses most closely linked to the development of ecclesial proposals for the Amazon.