VATICAN/ARGENTINA/PARAGUAY, mda. Pope Francis has appointed Fr. Francisco Pistilli Scorzara – the general superior of the Schoenstatt Fathers for the Region of the Father (Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Italy, Nigeria) – as the bishop of the Diocese of Encarnación in Paraguay. He will be ordained as bishop on 20 December 2014.
Fr. Francisco Javier Pistilli Scorzara was born on 26 May 1965 in Asunción, Paraguay. He entered the Secular Institute of the Schoenstatt Fathers in 1988. He was ordained a priest at the Tuparenda Shrine in Paraguay on 10 May 1997 by Mons. Claudio Giménez, also a Schoenstatt Father.
He completed his medical studies at the Asunción National University between 1988 and 1990, and studied philosophy and theology at the Franciscan and Capuchin Institute in Münster, Germany. After working for two years as a parish priest at Our Lady of the Rosary of Luque Church in Paraguay, he became the director for the Boys Youth at the Youth Shrine in Asunción. Between 2004 and 2012, he was the novice master at the Ibero-American Novitiate for the Schoenstatt Fathers in Tuparenda, and in December 2011 was appointed as the Regional Superior for the Region of the Father.
He recently attended the Jubilee celebrations of the 100 years of the Covenant of Love in Schoenstatt and Rome, which culminated in an audience with Pope Francis who sent the Schoenstatt members out to be missionary in the service of the Church and its mission in the world. A call that Fr. Francisco Pistilli has immediately taken up…
Encarnación, a city under Fr. Kentenich’s gaze
When Father Kentenich visited Oberá, Argentina on 21 September 1949 he arrived in a seaplane at about midday, and upon setting foot on solid ground in Posadas, Fr. Gazmann said to him: “Look, Father, there is Paraguay.” The city that Fr. Kentenich could see on the far bank of the river was Encarnación.
The Schoenstatt Family in Paraguay, especially in Encarnación – a young and committed Family – live from the “Gaze of the Father,” in the awareness that Fr. Kentenich, who never got to visit Paraguay, looked at this city and through it, the entire country, which today has one of the strongest and most missionary Schoenstatt Families in the world.
Congratulations, Fr. Francisco, and our prayers
Congratulations, Fr. Francisco! From the Shrines receive our prayers and contributions to the capital of grace in solidarity and gratitude for you and your new mission at the service of the Church!
In giving you the blessing, I send you as missionaries in the years to come. I send you, not in my name, but in the name of Jesus. I send you, not alone, but hand-in-hand with our Mother Mary, and within the womb of our Mother, the Holy Church. I send out you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Pope Francis to Schoenstatt
