section_path: Early life
section_name: Early life
paragraph_text: Early life
  
  Serrano was born on 19 March 1977 in Tivissa, Catalonia, Spain. He is a fluent speaker of Catalan, Spanish, French, English, Italian and Portuguese. He entered the minor seminary in Tortosa at the age of 14, then entered the major seminary in 1995. He studied at the Faculty of Theology of Catalonia in Barcelona and received a Bachelor of Theology degree in 2001. Serrano was ordained as a deacon in 2001 and served in that position in the parish of the Assumption of Mary in Amposta for a year. On 21 April 2002, he was ordained as a priest by Bishop Xavier Salinas i Vinyals in the Tortosa Cathedral.
  
  Serrano served as the priest of three rural parishes, la Palma d'Ebre, la Bisbal de Montsant and Margalef, from 2002 to 2005. He studied dogmatic theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University from 2005 to 2007 and earned a licentiate in 2007. Returning to Tortosa, he was the priest of the parishes of Sant Andreu and Sant Pere, both in the municipality Vandellòs i l'Hospitalet de l'Infant. From 2008 to 2009, he also served as moderator of the Pastoral Unit of Costa Nord. He was a lecturer at the Tortosa Major Seminary from 2007 to 2009.
  
  Serrano studied at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy in Rome from 2009 to 2012, at the Pontifical Lateran University, where he received a licentiate in canon law in 2011, and at the Pontifical Gregorian University, where he received a doctorate in dogmatic theology in 2012, with the work Palabra Sacramento y Carisma: La eclesiologia de E. Corecco.