Bishop of Ciudad Guayana
Bishop Carlos Alfredo Cabezas Mendoza was born on 26 January 1966 in Niquitao, in the diocese of Trujillo. He studied philosophy at the Seminario Arquidiocesano de Caracas Santa Rosa de Lima and theology at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome. He specialized in youth pastoral care and catechetics at the Salesian Pontifical University of Rome, and was subsequently awarded a licentiate in political sciences at the Universidad del Valle del Monboy in Valera, Venezuela. He received priestly ordination on 10 June 1990 in Rome from Saint John Paul II, and was incardinated in the diocese of Trujillo. He has held the following offices: diocesan chargé for youth pastoral care; parish priest of San Pablo Apóstol in La Puerta; parish priest of the Cathedral; professor at the Fray Alonso Briceño Institute of Religious Sciences in Trujillo; professor at the Seminario Mayor Diocesano Sagrado Corazón de Jesús in Trujillo; episcopal vicar for the clergy and parish priest of Nuestra Señora del Carmon in Boconó. He was appointed bishop of Punto Fijo on 4 June 2016 and received episcopal consecration the following 6 August. Within the Venezuelan Episcopal Conference, he is chair of the Episcopal Commission for Catechesis and Biblical Pastoral Ministry, and member of the Permanent Episcopal Council.