He did his ecclesiastical studies in Rome at the Pontifical Gregorian University and the Pontifical University of St. Thomas (The Angelicum). He was ordained a deacon in Rome, on June 29, 1985, by Archbishop Santos Abril y Castelló, then Apostolic Nuncio to Bolivia. On Christmas Eve that same year he was ordained a priest in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Rome by Eduardo Martínez Somalo, future prefect of the Vatican department now called the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life and future cardinal.