Mario Alberto Molina Palma was born in the City of Panama on October 13, 1948. He took his primary and secondary education in San Agustín School in the same city. He moved to the United States and entered the novitiate of the Augustinian Recollects in Kansas City. He made the first profession of vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience on the 27th of August 1968. After his philosophy studies in Rockhurst College, he went to the Faculty of Theology, San Vicente Ferrer, in Valencia (Spain) for his formation in theology. He had his solemn profession of vows on August 28, 1971, and his ordination to the priestly order on the 29th of June 1975 in Panama City. One year after Fr. Alberto got his licentiate in Sacred Scriptures at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, and in 1985 he obtained the doctoral degree.
He was assigned to Guatemala. He served for some time as professor of Sacred Scriptures and parish priest. He also served as general secretary adjunct to the Episcopal Commission. He was appointed bishop of Quiché on October 29, 2004, and was ordained on January 22, 2005. These past few years, Bishop Molina was president of the Episcopal Commission on the Pastoral Care of the Indigenous People and Interreligious Dialogue. And last year he was made president of the Episcopal Commission on Education.
The Recollects in Los Altos
Beginning the year 1996 the archdiocese of Los Altos, as an ecclesiastical circumscription, included the civil departments of Quetzaltenango and Totonicapán. It has an extension of 4,890 sq. km. and a population of 1,300,000 inhabitants. Presently the archdiocese comprises of 32 parishes, 28 diocesan priests and 30 religious clergy. There are in the area 40 religious women, 8 religious men and 10 members of the secular institute. The diocese has 17 candidates to the priesthood in the major seminary.
The presence of the Augustinian Recollects in this territory dates back to 1958, the time they took charge of the administration of the parishes of San Miguel Arcángel (Totonicapán) and Nuestra Señora de la Soledad del Calvario (Quetzaltenango). The latter was returned to the diocese in 1970.
The parish of Totonicapán has 100,000 inhabitants. It comprises the entire municipal territory of the city. The majority of the population is indigenous and the administration of the territory is divided into the capital (with 12,000 inhabitants) and 52 regions or settlements. It was in 1998 when the parish church, which was established in 1545, was declared co-cathedral of the archdiocese.
In the same year, 1998, the Recollects took charge of the parish of the Sagrada Familia in Quetzalatenango. This parish was established in 1976 and has a 30,000–population that is distributed into one capital and five barrios.