Carlos Azpiroz Costa

Life Early life Azpiroz was born in Buenos Aires in 1956, the eighth of the 14 children (thirteen boys, one girl) born to Francisco Azpiroz Gil (died 1988) and Nélida Victoria Costa Colombo (died 1976). His father was an agricultural engineer who oversaw the large family holdings. His father's parents were immigrants from the Navarre region of Spain, while his maternal grandparents had come from Italy.

As a child, Azpiroz was enrolled at the Colegio Champagnat de Buenos Aires, run by the Marist Brothers, where he completed both his elementary education and his secondary, graduating in 1974. He then entered the law school of the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina (UCA). After several years of study, he began to feel a certain restlessness about his future. In 1978 he met two professors at the university who were Dominican friars who taught moral theology at the law school. Through discussions with them and visits to their houses, he felt called to join their Order. In September 1989, the Prior Provincial sent him to Rome to study canon law at the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas (better known as the Angelicum) in Rome, where he was assigned to live at Santa Sabina Priory, the international studium of the Dominican Order. He also fulfilled various offices of the Order while pursuing his studies. In 1997 he was appointed the Procurator General of the Dominican Order, as well as rector of the Basilica of Santa Sabina, attached to the Dominican priory, by then Master of the Order of Preachers, Timothy Radcliffe.

Azpiroz served in this office for a nine-year term, ending with the election of his successor on 5 September 2010.

Bishop On 3 November 2015, Pope Francis appointed Azpiroz the Archbishop coadjutor of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Bahia Blanca. He was ordained a bishop on the following 22 December by Guillermo José Garlatti, the Archbishop of Bahía Blanca, under whom he served until succeeding him as Archbishop on 12 July 2017.