The bishop of Puno, Jorge Pedro Carrión Pavlich, has died at the age of 76 in a clinic in Lima, where he had been hospitalized for several days. The death, which occurred on the night of Saturday, October 31 according to the newspaper La República and Panamericana Televisión, was announced to the faithful on Sunday, November 1 during the Mass at the sanctuary of the Virgin of Candelaria in Puno. He is the second Peruvian bishop to die in two days: on Friday the 30th, the archbishop of Cusco, Richard Daniel Alarcón Urrutia, had passed away, two weeks before the arrival of León XIV in Peru, where he will visit the ancient Inca capital on November 15.
The Peruvian Episcopal Conference expressed its condolences, joined in the prayer of the Church of Puno and the bishop’s family, and gave thanks to God “for his life and his dedication to the service of the Church”, according to the agency EWTN News. The Diocese of Puno had not issued its own statement when Panamericana broke the news. The remains were laid out on Sunday in the funeral chapel of the sanctuary of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Monterrico, in the Lima district of Santiago de Surco, and will be transferred to Puno. The funeral Mass is scheduled for Tuesday, November 3, and the burial for Wednesday, November 4 in the cemetery of Tarma, his hometown, according to EWTN News.
Carrión was born in Tarma, in the Junín region, on May 21, 1950. He studied in Germany and was ordained a priest on August 15, 1976. He served as assistant secretary of the Peruvian Episcopal Conference and began his pastoral work in the Diocese of Puno on April 17, 1991. On February 14, 1998, he was appointed apostolic administrator, and on March 25, 2000, John Paul II named him bishop of Puno. He received episcopal ordination on May 7 of that year at the hands of Cardinal Augusto Vargas Alzamora, then archbishop of Lima. He has led the diocese, first as administrator and later as bishop, for more than twenty-eight years.
In an interview with Radio Onda Azul last August, he recalled that upon his arrival he found a diocese with seventeen national priests, many of them elderly, and churches lacking basic furnishings, and that over the years he came to have about forty-five young priests, something he attributed to seminary formation and the restoration of the churches, according to La República. He reopened the conciliar seminary of San Ambrosio, promoted pastoral care for the Quechua-speaking population, and during the pandemic sought oxygen tanks for the sick in the provinces of Puno, according to the portal Exitosa, which adds that his administration also drew criticism from some groups linked to the diocese.
In his final years of leadership, the diocese was also involved in a judicial investigation. In February 2025, the Provincial Prosecutor’s Office of Puno ordered that the bishop be brought by public force to testify in an investigation for alleged illicit sale of religious heritage and misappropriation of funds involving the chancellor and spokesperson of the diocese, Alex Aníbal Cano Arce, as this outlet reported at the time. The chancellor, who was also an active-duty police officer, was removed in March of that year amid an investigation for alleged money laundering. This editorial team has been unable to confirm the outcome of that fiscal investigation.
With Carrión’s death, the Diocese of Puno becomes vacant. The situation is different in Cusco, where the coadjutor archbishop, the Augustinian Lizardo Estrada, appointed by León XIV on August 29, succeeds Alarcón and will be the one to receive the Pope. The southern Andean region of Peru thus approaches the papal visit with two of its sees in full transition and with two bishops’ funerals in the same week.
Read also
- Richard Alarcón, archbishop of Cusco, dies fifteen days before León XIV’s visit
- The bishop of Puno refuses to testify before the Prosecutor’s Office for alleged misappropriation of ecclesiastical assets
- Police officer and Chancellor of the Diocese of Puno is removed amid investigation for money laundering