This Monday, September 1, the Bishop Emeritus of Rancagua, Mons. Alejandro Goic Karmelic, who was president of the Chilean Episcopal Conference between 2004 and 2010.
A note from the Diocese of Rancagua, published in the website From the Chilean episcopate, he points out that the prelate had been admitted on August 29 for complications in his health.
Receive the main news of ACI Press by WhatsApp and Telegram
It is increasingly difficult to see Catholic news on social networks. Subscribe to our free channels today:
He also emphasizes that, since his resignation in 2018, the bishop “lived his retirement dedicated to prayer, reading and reflection, in the monastery of the perpetual adoratrices of the Blessed Sacrament.”
“We pray to the entire ecclesial community and who knew how to join in prayer for their eternal rest and for the comfort of their relatives and close. Soon more information will be delivered regarding their funerals,” says the note.
Who was Mons. Alejandro Goic Karmelic?
Alejandro Goic Karmelic was a Chilean bishop who was born on March 7, 1940 in Punta Arenas. He was ordained a priest on March 12, 1966.
In 1978, he actively participated in the efforts between the Catholic Church in Chile and Argentina to avoid a war conflict, culminating with the arbitration of John Paul II.
On March 23, 1979 he was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Concepción and received the episcopal consecration from Pope San Juan Paul II, being the first Chilean bishop enshrined by the Polish Pontiff.
In 1991 he was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Talca and, in 1994 he was appointed Bishop of Osorno. In 2003 he was appointed Bishop Coadjutor of Rancagua, diocese that he assumed fully in 2004.
He chaired the Episcopal Conference of Chile between 2004 and 2010 and led the National Council for the Prevention of Abuse and accompaniment of victims between 2011 and 2018.
The bishop resigned from that entity after the case of the brotherhood, which involved 14 priests of his diocese to those who suspended, and that would have been supposedly part of a network of abuse, a case that culminated without accused before civil justice.
During the El Teniente mine workers’ strike in 2007, he expressed his support for the search for justice for workers, and in 2009 he highlighted the importance of an “ethical salary”.
In 2012, when Mons. Goic was vice president of the Chilean Episcopate, he raised his voice to ask that there be an equitable distribution of income.
In April 2020 he suffered a heart attack and underwent surgery from which he recovered satisfactorily.
Walter Sánchez Silva
I am husband since 2008. With my wife we have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before birth. Since I joined ACI Press in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Colonia, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the family’s synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Sinodality, in 2023. I follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers the persecution of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as the ecclesial news in the region.