Bishop of Valdivia
Bishop Santiago Jaime Silva Retamales, Bishop of Valdivia, was born on June 17, 1955, in La Calera, in the Diocese of Valparaíso. He received his primary education at the Marist school of San José in La Calera and his secondary education at the Instituto Rafael Ariztía in Quillota and the Marcelino Champagnat school in Villa Alemana. After completing secondary school he spent a period of religious life with the Marist Brothers in Argentina, and he then entered the San Rafael major seminary at Lo Vásquez, in the Diocese of Valparaíso. He was ordained a priest on October 24, 1980, in the cathedral of Valparaíso by Emilio Tagle Covarrubias. For six years he was parish priest of Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria in Algarrobo. He served as professor, formator and vice-rector of the San Rafael pontifical major seminary at Lo Vásquez, and from 1998 as its rector, and he taught sacred scripture at the faculty of theology of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, at the San Rafael seminary and at the Pontifical Catholic University of Valparaíso. He holds a master's degree in dogmatic theology from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and a licentiate in sacred scripture from the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome. On February 16, 2002, he was appointed Auxiliary Bishop of Valparaíso and Titular Bishop of Bela. He received episcopal ordination on April 6, 2002, at Valparaíso, with Gonzalo Duarte García de Cortázar as principal consecrator and Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa and Francisco Javier Prado Aránguiz as co-consecrators. He was president of the biblical pastoral commission of the Chilean bishops' conference and the bishop responsible for the biblical pastoral centre for Latin America of the Latin American Episcopal Council, and as an expert in sacred scripture he took part in May 2007 in the fifth general conference of that council at Aparecida, in Brazil. In 2008 he represented the Chilean bishops' conference at the twelfth ordinary general assembly of the Synod of Bishops, on the word of God in the life and mission of the Church, and was named vice-president of the synodal commission. On July 7, 2015, he was appointed Military Ordinary for Chile, being transferred from the titular see of Bela and the office of Auxiliary Bishop of Valparaíso. On December 23, 2020, he was appointed Bishop of Valdivia, and he was installed on March 19, 2021. His episcopal motto is Fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum.