Bishop of San Felipe
Bishop Gonzalo Arturo Bravo Álvarez, Bishop of San Felipe, was born on December 30, 1962, in Valparaíso, in Chile, and completed his primary and secondary studies at Quilpué. Before entering the seminary he obtained a licentiate in the basic sciences of engineering and the title of civil engineer at the Federico Santa María Technical University of Valparaíso. He entered the San Rafael major seminary of the Diocese of Valparaíso on March 19, 1990, and made his philosophical and theological studies there. He took a baccalaureate in theology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso, and a licentiate in 2001 and a doctorate in 2008 in biblical theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He was ordained a deacon on April 20, 1997, and a priest on October 12, 1997, in the cathedral of Valparaíso by Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa, being incardinated in the Diocese of Valparaíso. He served as parochial vicar of Nuestra Señora de los Dolores Parish in Viña del Mar from 2001 to 2002, as parish administrator of Jesús Buen Pastor Parish in Valparaíso from 2002 to 2005, and from 2008 as parish priest of El Salvador del Mundo Parish at La Matriz in Valparaíso. He was also a professor of the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso from 2008, diocesan vicar for economic affairs from 2013 to 2016, and from 2019 dean of the ecclesiastical faculty of theology of that university. On May 26, 2020, he was appointed Bishop of San Felipe. He received episcopal ordination on August 15, 2020, at San Felipe, with Alberto Ortega Martín as principal consecrator and Celestino Aós Braco and Pedro Mario Ossandón Buljevic as co-consecrators. His episcopal motto is Mi refugio es el Señor.