Alejandro Goić Karmelić born in the city of Punta Arenas on 7 March 1940, the son of a family of Croatian immigrants, from the island of Brač, Dalmatia.

Goic learned to read at a rural school,[1] and continued his studies at the Instituto Don Bosco and the Liceo Salesiano in Punta Arenas.

Goic was ordained to the priesthood on 12 March 1966 in Punta Arenas, by the man who motivated him to explore his priestly vocation, the bishop of the diocese, Vladimiro Boric.

[6] During the 1980s, when Goic was auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Concepción, he decided to visit Father Enrique Moreno Laval, a vicar in the Lota coal mining area, in order to familiarize himself with the situation of native workers demanding labor improvements.

In a letter signed by him as President of the Chilean Conference of Bishops, dated to 18 July 2007, he stated: Progress is needed on the subject of collective bargaining on the issue of the company's outsourcing.

[11] However, the possibility that military personnel convicted of violations of human rights would benefit from the pardon was ruled out by government spokesperson Carolina Tohá.

In 2007, just weeks after the state mining company Codelco reached an agreement with the outsourced employees, the prelate said in an interview that the minimum salary of $144,000 CLP (ca.

Some characters in the political and business landscape, such as Senator Evelyn Matthei,[15] were skeptical of Bishop Goic's suggestion due to the potential negative effects it could have on small- and medium-sized enterprises; some considered the measure "manipulative".

[17] In November 2009, Goic expressed concern at the emergence of same-sex couples in party political broadcasts for the presidential election of that year, particularly in advertisements for the candidates Eduardo Frei and Sebastián Piñera; the latter was criticized for this issue even within his own coalition, the conservative Independent Democrat Union.

Piñera said he was in "total and absolute agreement" with Bishop Goic, but defended the use of homosexual issues in political campaigns because "a good president has to worry about all Chileans".

[18] Jorge Pizarro, the chief of Eduardo Frei's campaign, said in the strongest terms that, "even in the Church there are many homosexuals, people who commit crimes as sensitive as pedophilia, and they exist everywhere: and that's not going to silence the issue".