Peru loses second bishop in two days as Pope Leo's visit nears
Bishop Jorge Carrión Pavlich of Puno died at age 76 on Nov. 1, two days after Archbishop Richard Alarcón of Cusco died. Carrión led the Diocese of Puno for more than 24 years and had served as a priest for 50 years. His death comes less than two weeks before Pope Leo XIV’s Nov. 11–16 visit to Peru; Puno is not on the papal itinerary. Carrión’s funeral Mass is scheduled for Nov. 3 in Puno, and he will be buried in his hometown of Tarma on Nov. 4.
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Bishop Jorge Pedro Carrión Pavlich of Puno died at 76, two days after Archbishop Richard Daniel Alarcón Urrutia of Cusco. Their deaths come shortly before Pope Leo XIV’s Nov. 11–16 visit to Peru, where he previously served as a missionary and bishop.
Carrión’s death was announced Nov. 1 during Mass at the Shrine of the Virgin of Candelaria in Puno. He had been hospitalized at a clinic in Lima. Peru’s bishops’ conference expressed condolences, praised his service to the Church, and asked for prayers for him and his family.
Born in Tarma, Carrión had marked 50 years as a priest and more than 26 years as a bishop. Pope John Paul II appointed him a bishop in 2000, and he led the Diocese of Puno for more than 24 years; before that, he served as assistant secretary of the Peruvian bishops’ conference.
Alarcón, 74, died Oct. 30 after battling cancer. He had been helping prepare for the pope’s scheduled stop in Cusco on Nov. 15, and Leo expressed sorrow over his death. Puno is not included on the pope’s published itinerary.
Carrión’s wake began Nov. 1 in Lima, with a vigil scheduled to continue Nov. 2 in Puno. His funeral Mass is set for Nov. 3, followed by burial on Nov. 4 in Tarma, his hometown.
Episcopal succession sustains pastoral continuity in the Catholic Church
Episcopal succession sustains pastoral continuity by handing on the apostolic ministry through the bishops, so that the Church’s teaching, sacramental life, and pastoral care remain connected to the mission Christ entrusted to the Apostles. This continuity is not merely an unbroken list of officeholders: it is a living, sacramental service exercised in fidelity to the apostolic faith and in communion with the whole Church.
The Catholic understanding is that Christ’s mission did not end with the deaths of the Apostles. The International Theological Commission describes the Church’s ministerial succession as necessary because the apostolic ministry serves each generation of Christians. It links the apostolicity of the whole Church with the continuing ministry of bishops.
This succession is transmitted through episcopal ordination. The rite includes the laying on of hands and prayer invoking the Holy Spirit; it is not simply an appointment to an administrative position. The Commission says that the ministry is received through the visible ordination rite, which signifies the gift of the Spirit and the authority needed for the ministry.
The succession matters because, through the bishops’ ministry, Christ continues to serve the Church. That ministry includes proclaiming the Gospel and celebrating the sacraments, especially the Eucharist. The Commission calls the apostolic ministry a means of Christ’s effective presence among the people of God, while emphasizing that this does not diminish Christ’s direct action in the life of each believer.
Continuity does not mean that every bishop is personally exemplary or that the Church never faces conflict or failure. It means that the Church’s pastoral and sacramental ministry is not reinvented from one generation to the next: it is entrusted and handed on within the Church, in connection with the apostolic witness. Benedict XVI, explaining the thought of St. Irenaeus, describes episcopal succession as a historical means by which the apostolic faith is transmitted and Christ continues to act through the Church’s ministry.
The continuity is therefore both sacramental and doctrinal. Ordination establishes a bishop in the apostolic ministry, but succession is not simply a matter of tracing a chain of ordinations while disregarding the faith that ministry exists to serve. The Commission connects ordination with the Church’s apostolic confession, while Benedict XVI highlights succession as a guarantee of the permanence of the apostolic word.
“The purpose of the ministry of Bishops: that this chain of communion be not broken. This is the essence of the Apostolic Succession.”
The “chain of communion” is more than institutional survival. It expresses the Church’s continuing communion with the Apostles’ witness to Christ and with the generations of Christians who have received and handed on that faith.
A bishop’s authority is pastoral: it exists to serve the unity and development of the Church, not to stand apart from or above the community. The Commission explicitly says that apostolic government must not be separated from the community in that way; its role is service “in and for the community.”
Nor does succession make each bishop an isolated authority. Bishops are joined together in a college, with the Pope as its head and the visible source of unity among the bishops. Together, the bishops have responsibility for the Church’s mission, while each bishop serves as a source and foundation of unity in his particular Church. The unity of the episcopate is thus part of how the Church’s unity is preserved through time.
The historical evidence summarized by the Commission shows how the Church’s understanding took recognizable form in the early centuries: by the end of the first century, apostles, their close collaborators, or their successors were guiding local communities; by the beginning of the second century, the single bishop leading a local community appears clearly in the writings of St. Ignatius of Antioch.
Thus, when a bishop dies or leaves office, the individual pastor’s service ends, but the Church’s apostolic ministry does not. Episcopal succession is the Church’s sacramental way of preserving pastoral continuity: a continuing ministry of teaching, governing, and sanctifying, carried out in communion with the bishops and the successor of Peter, and ordered toward keeping the apostolic faith alive in every generation.