Ulises Aurelio Casiano Vargas

Who is Ulises Aurelio Casiano Vargas?

Ulises Aurelio Casiano Vargas is the bishop emeritus of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Mayagüez, in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico.

Casiano was born at the Palmarejo ward in the nearby town of Lajas, which is also the birthplace of the first native Puerto Rican Roman Catholic cardinal, Luis Aponte Martínez. He attended the Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico in nearby Ponce, from which he graduated with a Bachelors degree in Education in 1955. He then became a schoolteacher and school administrator, with a reputation for efficiency. He then joined the University's Regina Cleri Seminar, and continued Theology studies at Our Lady of Angels seminar in New York. Casiano was eventually ordered as a priest on May 30, 1967. He later obtained a Juris Doctor degree in Canonical Law from the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Monsignor Casiano was named Bishop of the Mayagüez diocese by Pope Paul VI on March 3, 1976, and was ordered as such by Cardinal Aponte Martínez on April 30, 1976.

A former choirmaster while studying at the Regina Cleri seminar, Casiano has promoted the development of the musical ministries associated with the Mayagüez diocese. For instance, every Good Friday, at the reading of the Seven Words of Jesus on The Cross at Mayagüez's cathedral, the sermon features a musical piece, in seven parts, written by local music professor José Antonio Gaudier in 1873, and played by the diocese's philharmonic orchestra.