Ajelandro Goic Karmelic was born in Punta Arenas on March 7, 1940, a descendant of Croatian emigrants from the island of Brač. He was ordained a priest in 1966, and in 1979 he was appointed auxiliary bishop of the diocese of Concepción and titular bishop of Africa, the latter being ordained the same year. He was then appointed bishop of Osorno in 1994, and in 2003 coadjutor bishop of Rancagua, where he died as bishop emeritus on September 1, 2025. Monsignor Goić visited Brač in 2009, where he presided over the Second Sunday of Advent in Pražnice, his father’s birthplace (his mother was from Bol).
The occasion for the visit to Brač, that year, was an official trip to Rome, where, as president of the Bishops’ Conference of Chile, he participated with a delegation in the celebration of the 25th anniversary of the establishment of peace between Argentina and Chile, which was achieved through the intervention of Pope John Paul II.
Monsignor Goić is not the first priests of Croatian origin in Chile, but was the first Chilean bishop of Brač roots.
