title: Edmundo Valenzuela
text: Archbishop Edmundo Ponziano Valenzuela Mellid SDB (born 19 November 1944) is a Roman Catholic missionary currently serving in Paraguay as the sixth Metropolitan Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Asunción. On February 13, 2006, he was appointed by Pope Benedict XVI as Apostolic Vicar to Chaco Paraguayo, an area with a population of 18,000 but only 5 ordained priests. As a result of this appointment, he was consecrated to the episcopate 22 April 2006. Prior to this appointment, Valenzuela served as a high-profile missionary in Angola. Valenzuela was ordained a priest of the Salesians of Don Bosco in 1977.
  
  Upon the resignation of Metropolitan Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Asunción Pastor Cuquejo due to age, Valenzuela, as Coadjutor, became the new Metropolitan Archbishop of Asunción on 6 November 2014, as the 44th bishop of Asunción and the 6th metropolitan archbishop.   He received the archiepiscopal pallium from Pope Francis on 29 June 2015 at St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City.
  
  On 6 March 2022 he was succeeded by Adalberto Martínez Flores who became the VII Archbishop of Asunción and Valenzuela, after his resignation, became Archbishop Emeritus.
  
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  External links
  
  1944 births
  Living people
  Paraguayan Roman Catholic archbishops
  Roman Catholic missionaries in Paraguay
  20th-century Roman Catholic priests
  21st-century Roman Catholic priests
  Salesian bishops
  People from Villarrica, Paraguay
  Roman Catholic missionaries in Angola
  Roman Catholic archbishops of Asunción