Jorge Carrión Pavlich

Jorge Pedro Carrión Pavlich was born on 25 May 1950 in Tarma, in the Junín region of central Peru. He entered the minor seminary of Tarma and continued his studies abroad, first at the Pontifical Urban University in Rome and then at the University of Bamberg in Germany.

He was ordained a priest on 15 August 1976, at the age of 26. He served as a parish priest in Pasco, in the Diocese of Tarma. He later worked for the Peruvian Episcopal Conference as deputy secretary and then vice secretary, and at the time of his appointment as bishop he was president of the conference's economic committee.

According to La República, his work in Puno began on 17 April 1991. On 14 February 1998 he was appointed apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Puno. Pope John Paul II named him Bishop of Puno on 25 March 2000, succeeding Jesús Mateo Calderón Barrueto, and he received episcopal consecration on 7 May 2000 in Puno Cathedral. The principal consecrator was Cardinal Augusto Vargas Alzamora, Archbishop of Lima, with Archbishop Luis Sánchez-Moreno Lira of Arequipa and Archbishop Rino Passigato as co-consecrators. He made ad limina visits to Rome with the Peruvian bishops in 2009 and 2017, and in 2025 he was principal consecrator of Bishop Benigno Condori Chuchi.

He later said he had found the diocese short of priests, with just 17 Peruvian clergy, and with churches lacking basic ornaments. He highlighted the restoration of churches and the training of new priests at the local seminary, and said the diocese had grown to about 45 young priests. He reopened the Seminario Conciliar San Ambrosio, promoted evangelisation among Quechua speaking peoples and, during the Covid pandemic, supplied oxygen tanks to people in need.

As a Catholic priest and bishop he did not marry. His family roots were in Tarma, where he chose to be buried. Little else about his private life has been reported.

Bishop Carrión Pavlich died on the night of Saturday, 31 October 2026, in a clinic in Lima, where he had been in hospital for some time. He was 76. A cause of death was not made public. His death was announced on Sunday, 1 November, during a Mass at the Sanctuary of the Virgin of Candelaria in Puno, and the Peruvian Episcopal Conference issued a message of condolence giving thanks for his life and his service to the Church.

His death came less than two days after that of Archbishop Richard Alarcón Urrutia of Cusco, and shortly before Pope Leo XIV's planned visit to Peru from 11 to 16 November 2026. A wake was held on 1 November at the Archdiocesan Sanctuary of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Santiago de Surco, Lima, followed by a vigil in Puno on 2 November and a funeral Mass there on 3 November. His remains were then to be taken to Tarma for burial on 4 November.

Carrión Pavlich led the Church in Puno for 26 years as bishop, and for more than three decades in all counting his earlier work there. He is remembered for rebuilding the clergy of a diocese that had very few priests when he arrived, for restoring its churches and for sustaining the seminary in the high Andean region around Lake Titicaca. The Archdiocese of Lima noted that he had completed 50 years of priestly life.