On Saturday, March 22, a day before leaving the Gemelli Hospital, Pope Francis created the new diocese of Caazapá, taking part in the territory of the territory of the Villarrica Diocese of the Holy Spirit in Paraguay, and appointed as his first bishop the Franciscan priest Marcelo Benítez Martínez.
Caazapá: the new diocese of Paraguay
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According to the press office of the Vaticanthe new Paraguayan diocese has an extension of 9,496 square kilometers, taken from the territory of the Diocese of Villarrica, which went from having 13,342 to 3,946 square kilometers.
It has 194,512 inhabitants, of which 171,170 are Catholics, grouped in 15 parishes, and has 483 chapels.
To serve these faithful, the new prelate has 18 diocesan priests and two religious presbyters, in addition to 39 permanent deacons.
It also has four Catholic elementary schools and four other high schools.
The First Bishop of Caazapá
The elected bishop was until now Vicar for Paraguay of the province of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin of the Río de la Plata.
Mons. Marcelo Benítez Martínez, ofm, was born on September 6, 1956 in Santa Maria, district of General Morínigo, in the Paraguayan Department of Caazapá. It has 68 years.
He entered the Franciscan Seminar Fray Luis Bolaño de Lambaré and obtained the Bachelor of Theology at the Jesuit Humanistic and Philosophical Institute of the Catholic University Our Lady of the Assumption.
He cast his votes with the Franciscans in 1993 and was ordered priest in 1994. He was designated to govern different parishes of the Diocese of Villarrica. He also held different positions of the Franciscan government.
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.