Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Agenzia Fides) – Cardinal Ivan Dias, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, on September 24, 2010 appointed as National Director of Pontifical Mission Societies in Chile for five years (2010-2015), Fr. Gianluca Roso of the Comboni Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (MCCJ).
The new National Director was born in Schio, Diocese of Vicenza (Italy), on May 9, 1967. He attended middle and secondary schools at the Comboni College in Padua and graduated with a degree in art and Russian iconography. In 1986, he entered the Comboni Missionaries as a postulant and two years after, entered the novitiate. He made his first religious profession on May 19, 1990. He was sent by his superiors to Lima to complete his theological studies (1990-1994). He was ordained a deacon in Lima in 1993 and was ordained a priest in 1994, in his hometown. As a young man, he was a catechist and parish youth group leader. He attended the Missionary Exhibition organized in 1986 by the Pontifical Mission in Italy, with 8 panels. During his theological studies in Lima, he was dedicated to prison ministry (1991-1994), did parish ministry in Arequipa, and taught Sacred Scripture at the diocesan school of catechesis (1995-2000). In 1996, he founded a group of young Peruvian artists devoted to the liturgical and religious art. From 2001 to 2004, he was director of the Mission Center of the Italian province of the Comboni Missionaries, Regional Superior of the Comboni Chile from 2005 to 2007, and after another period in Italy (2007-2008), in January 2009 he returned to Chile, where he served in two parishes and as pastoral chaplain to a religious community/ Since March 2009, he has been a member of the central team of the Archdiocese of Santiago for the Continental Mission. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 28/10/2010)
