The photos were then processed by Artificial Intelligence programs. They are now clean and colourful, so much so that they seem to have been taken with a modern digital camera.
The photo of Venerable Ortiz Arrieta was found inside a set of photographs and prints pasted into a notebook during the first third of the twentieth century, and received at the Salesian Historical Archives in Santa Rosa Province, Peru, from the Salesian Library at Magdalena del Mar, in Lima. According to David Franco Córdova, historian of the Congregation and director of the Historical Archives, the notebook belonged to Fr Pedro Núñez Galdós (Arequipa, 1885 - Lima, 1961), who was Bishop Ortiz Arrietaìs secretary in Chachapoyas, between 1925 and 1929.
The shot shows Octavio Ortiz Arrieta shortly before he was ordained bishop of Chachapoyas. Although there is no explicit information on when and where it was taken, it was dated between November 1920 and June 1922, when Ortiz Arrieta was appointed bishop and awaiting his episcopal consecration in the house at Breña, in Lima.
To make the figure of the Venerable Salesian better known, this photograph was reproduced in colour through the use of Artificial Intelligence programs, and thanks to the professional work carried out by illustrator María Elena Cariapaza.
In this case, then, the advances of science and the most modern technologies, together with the strength inherent in photographic images, have managed to bring this figure of holiness, Bishop Octavio Ortiz Arrieta, closer to the people of today.
