His death comes three days after the Pope arrived in Peru, the country where they both coincided for decades as missionaries of the same order.
Berni was born on 26 May 1940 in Piane di Carniglia, in the Italian municipality of Bedonia, and was ordained a priest on 29 June 1966. Paul VI had erected three years before his arrival the prelature of Chuquibambilla and had entrusted it to the Augustinian Italians.
He was for fifteen years parish priest of Antabamba, also attentive to Grau and Cotabambas, and promoted projects with Caritas, including a program of distribution of seeds and vegetables, with the participation of many women, to improve the feeding of children. John Paul II appointed him prelate bishop of Chuquibambilla on March 29, 1989. He asked to receive the episcopal ordination in the Basilica of San Pietro in Ciel d’Oro de Pavia, where the relics of St. Augustine are guarded.
Francis accepted his resignation on April 24, 2018, when he was about to turn 78, and then returned to Italy.
The friendship with Robert Prevost was born in the Peruvian mission. According to Vatican News, both were at least twice a year at the meetings of the order, and Prevost, as a prior general of the Augustinians, visited the Andean communities on several occasions. In 2018, already being bishop of Chiclayo, he traveled more than a thousand kilometers to dismiss Berni at the end of his ministry.
As prefect of the Dicastery for the Bishops he visited him in Liguria, and Berni returned the visit when he was created cardinal. In November 2025, the bishop emeritus was received by Leo XIV at the Apostolic Palace.
From his life in the Andes he left a phrase that Vatican News collects: “You can live happy in simplicity, watching people and children smile, even if they have nothing.” On June 29 he had celebrated his sixty years of priesthood.
The Peruvian Bishops’ Conference expressed regret on its social networks and thanked God for Berni’s “47 years of missionary dedication” in the country, especially in Apurímac. The current prelate of Chuquibambilla, Monsignor Wilder Alberto Vásquez Saldaña, summoned the faithful to a mass for their soul in the cathedral of the Lord of Exaltation, according to ACI Prensa. There is no public message from the Pope for now.
Berni is the third bishop linked to the Peruvian Church who dies in ten days, on the eve of the Pope’s journey. On October 30, the Archbishop of Cusco, Richard Alarcón Urrutia, died at the age of 74, after a long illness, and on November 1 the bishop of Puno, Jorge Carrión Pavlich, at 76. Leo XIV will visit Peru from November 11 to 16, with planned stages in Chiclayo, the diocese he ruled, and in Cusco.
The Pope returns to Peru without one of the friends with whom he shared the Augustinian mission in the Andes.