The Holy Father has nominated a Comboni Father, Luis Alberto Barrera Pacheco, as Bishop of Tarma, Peru.
Until his appointment, Father Luis Alberto has been provincial superior of the Comboni Missionaries province of Peru-Chile as well as vice-president of the Conference of Religious Major Superiors in Peru. Father Luis Alberto is 50 years old and was born in Gorgor, Cajatambo, in the diocese of Huacho, which is part of the ecclesiastical province of Lima.
Father Luis Alberto Barrera Pacheco took his first vows as a Comboni Missionary on 5th May 1991 and made his perpetual profession on 19th November 1994. He was ordained a priest on 10th June 1995. He studied philosophy and theology at the Institute of Higher Learning Juan XXIII in Lima.
The missionary has fulfilled the following assignments: between 1996-2000, he was pastor of Santa Ana in Dekoa, diocese of Kaga-Bandoro, in the Republic of Central Africa (CAR); between 2001-2007, he was in charge of the Comboni postulants in Bangui, CAR; from 2008-2010, he was an educator at the Comboni theologate in Lima; from 2011 to the present, he has been provincial superior of the Comboni Province of Peru-Chile; and as of 2012, he has been vice-president of the Conference of Religious Major Superiors in Peru.
The Diocese of Tarma counts 554,000 baptised Catholics, out of a population of 652,000. It covers two provinces of the Peruvian region of Junín and Tarma, and two provinces of the region of Pasco, Daniel Alcides Carrión and Pasco. The episcopal see is the city of Tarma, where St. Anne’s cathedral is located. The diocese covers about 5,000 square miles and is divided into 18 parishes.
