Charity-founding missionary appointed bishop in Honduras

Fr Patricio Larrosa Martos is known for his work for the poor via a charity which has helped thousands of young people begin careers in engineering and nursing. 

Pope Leo XIV has appointed the Spanish missionary Fr Patricio Larrosa Martos as Bishop of Danlí in Honduras.  

Currently vicar general of the Archdiocese of Tegucigalpa, Larrosa was born in the province of Granada, southern Spain in 1960 and was ordained for the Diocese of Guadix in July 1985. 

In 1992 he arrived in Honduras, where he subsequently established the Asociación Colaboración y Esfuerzo en Honduras (ACOES Honduras, the Association for Partnership and Endeavours in Honduras), after a group of primary school children told him they could not continue their education and asked him to help.  

More than 4,500 children now attend the four schools the charity has founded while more than 2,500 receive grants allowing them to attend school.  

ACOES also runs initiatives to care for the elderly including providing them with lunch, a medical centre, and provides houses of sun-dried bricks (adobe) for impoverished families. Larrosa said serving Honduras is “a huge gift from God”. 

The Diocese of Danlí in southern Honduras has been without a bishop since October 2025 when Pope Leo accepted the resignation on grounds of “physical and mental exhaustion” of Bishop José Antonio Canales Motiño.

Fr Larrosa’s installation will take place on 25 July, the Feast of St James, the patron saint of Spain. In a message, the bishop-elect said that he wanted to work “for the good of our peoples” and especially those who did not know Jesus who would find “the doors of the Church open”.  

He also expressed his closeness to anyone who is suffering, saying he was holding in prayer particularly “orphans, widows, the unemployed, the sick, those deprived of liberty, migrants and those who know the sorrow of losing a loved one”.

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