Bishop of San Marcos de Arica
Moisés Carlos Atisha Contreras was born in Santiago, Chile, on 27 February 1969. He completed primary and secondary studies at Colegio Hispano Americano. He entered the minor seminary of the Order of Poor Clerics Regular of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools, the Piarist Fathers, for postulancy, novitiate, and studies toward the priesthood, which he pursued at the Faculty of Theology of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. After the novitiate, he made his first religious profession on 13 March 1988 and his solemn profession on 8 December 1993. On 25 March 1994 he was ordained a deacon in Santiago by Bishop Pablo Lizama Riquelme, then bishop of Melipilla and later archbishop, and then archbishop emeritus, of Antofagasta. On 14 December 1994 he received priestly ordination in the chapel of Colegio Hispano Americano in Santiago from Bishop Sergio Valech Aldunate, auxiliary bishop of Santiago de Chile. In his institute he worked in education and as spiritual companion at Colegio Hispano Americano and Colegio Calasanz. In 1998 he requested authorization to live outside his religious community and was received by the archbishop of Santiago de Chile, Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa, who assigned him to pastoral service, first as parochial vicar and then as pastor of Jesús Servidor parish. On 8 June 2001, the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life granted him the indult to leave the Piarist order and be incardinated in the archdiocese of Santiago de Chile; in the same year Cardinal Errázuriz granted him incardination. In the archdiocese of Santiago he exercised his ministry in Jesús Servidor parish, first as parochial vicar from 1999 to 2001 and later as pastor from 2001 to 2010. From March 2010 he was pastor of Ascensión del Señor parish in the West Zone of the archdiocese of Santiago de Chile, and from March 2013 he was also responsible for the Pastoral Office for Complaints of the Archdiocese of Santiago de Chile, OPADE. He was executive secretary of the National Commission for Youth Ministry of the Episcopal Conference of Chile. On 21 November 2014 he was appointed bishop of the diocese of San Marcos de Arica. The bishops of the episcopal conference elected him in 2018 to participate in the synod on youth, the pastoral sector that he had accompanied since 2015. On 17 January 2015 he was ordained by Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati Andrello, with Archbishop Pablo Lizama and Nuncio Ivo Scapolo concelebrating. From 2021 to the date of the source, he was president in the Pastoral Social area, Cáritas, INCAMI, and Cáritas Chile.