Bishop of Venezuela
Bishop Benito Adán Méndez Bracamonte, Bishop of the Military Ordinariate of Venezuela, was born on December 3, 1962, in Mene Grande, in the State of Zulia and the Diocese of Trujillo. He completed his philosophical and theological studies at the Santa Rosa de Lima Seminary of Caracas, obtained a bachelor's degree from the Javeriana University of Bogotá, and specialised in bioethics at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical Athenaeum in Rome. He was ordained a priest for Trujillo on July 26, 1990. In that diocese, from 1990 to 2001, he served as chaplain of the Sisters Servants of the Blessed Sacrament, vice-rector of the diocesan seminary, director of the diocesan newspaper Avance, and parish priest of the cathedral and of San José Obrero at Tres Esquinas. In 2001 he was incardinated in the Military Ordinariate of Venezuela, where he served as military chaplain, director of formation of the military seminary and vicar general. From 2014 he governed the Military Ordinariate as diocesan administrator. On June 8, 2015, he was appointed Bishop of the Military Ordinariate of Venezuela. He received episcopal ordination on July 10, 2015, with Jorge Liberato Urosa Savino as principal consecrator and Diego Rafael Padrón Sánchez and José Luis Azuaje Ayala as co-consecrators.