The Church needs holy priests who defend the faithful from ‘the dragon,’ archbishop says

Arequipa Archbishop Javier Del Río Alba is pictured here with the diocese’s newly ordained priests on Sept. 29, 2025. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Archdiocese of Arequipa

ACI Prensa Staff, Oct 3, 2025 / 09:00 am (CNA).

The archbishop of Arequipa, Javier Del Río Alba, recently ordained five new priests in southern Peru, encouraging them to be holy priests who give their lives for others and defend them from the devil.

In his homily for the Mass he celebrated in the Arequipa cathedral on Sept. 29, the feast of the Archangels, the prelate referred to the battle of the angels against the devil, the dragon in the Book of Revelation. 

The devil seeks the damnation of mankind, which the archbishop described as “a battle that is going on and will continue until the end of time” against “humanity and especially against the Church,” because the demon cannot bear that men and women have the possibility of going to heaven.

The end of that fight, the archbishop continued, is the victory already won by “the blood of the Lamb, Jesus Christ,” which the new priests, Junior René Alanoca, Martín Adán Bernales, Emmanuel García, Gino Elías Michelli, and Luis Anthony Tellez now participate in.

“This is a very beautiful thing: Today you will be constituted ministers who participate in the priestly ministry of Christ, constituted as servant priests,” he said.

Certainly, the prelate added, “we trust that, little by little, you will discover the indescribable beauty of priestly service, of what it means to be pastors shepherded by the Supreme Pastor and at the same time pastors who give their lives” for others.

The archbishop also emphasized that it is God himself who entrusts priests with “the beauty of that love that resonates so deeply within us that it causes the desire to serve to spring forth from the depths of our being, the desire to occupy the last place, the desire to spend our lives gram by gram, all our energy, our years, our entire being and our work in the service of God, serving our brothers and sisters.”

When priestly life, he noted, is not lived in holiness and lacks intimacy with the Lord in prayer, it becomes something merely functional, leading to boredom, something for which the priest is not made.

This boredom, the archbishop warned, can lead priests to fall into “the jaws of that dragon who is still in this world waging war against the children of the Woman [of Revelation].”

After encouraging the five new priests to be holy, the archbishop reminded them that “the holy Church of God needs shepherds like Jesus the Good Shepherd, who will defend them from the dragon and defend them from the empire of death.”

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.