CARDINAL JUAN JOSE OMELLA
The archbishop of Barcelona is a person after Pope Francis’ personal coronary heart. Unassuming and good-natured, he lives a humble life regardless of his lofty title, dedicating his Church profession to pastoral care, selling social justice and embodying a compassionate and inclusive imaginative and prescient of Catholicism.
“We should not see actuality solely by means of the eyes of those that have essentially the most, but in addition by means of the eyes of the poor,” he informed the Crux information website in April 2022, in phrases reflecting Pope Francis’ world imaginative and prescient.
He was born in 1946 within the village of Cretas in northeastern Spain. After being ordained in 1970, he served as a priest in plenty of Spanish parishes and in addition spent a 12 months as a missionary in Zaire, now known as the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Underscoring his dedication to social causes, he labored carefully with Spain’s Manos Unidas charity from 1999 to 2015, which tackles famine, illness and poverty within the growing world.
He grew to become a bishop in 1996 and was promoted to archbishop of Barcelona in 2015. Only one 12 months later, Pope Francis gave him a purple cardinal’s hat – a transfer seen as a transparent endorsement of Omella’s progressive tendencies, which stand in distinction to extra conservative components that after dominated the Spanish Church.
Omella, 79, is a former president of Spain’s bishops’ convention. He needed to take care of the fallout from an unbiased fee in 2023 that estimated that greater than 200,000 minors could have been sexually abused by Spanish clergy for many years.
Omella has repeatedly requested for forgiveness for the mismanagement of sexual abuse, however has denied that so many kids had been abused, with an inner Church investigation figuring out simply 927 victims for the reason that Forties.
“On the finish of the day, numbers don’t get us anyplace. The necessary factor is the folks and to make amends so far as potential,” he mentioned.
“Blaming is just not the best way. The issue doesn’t belong to the Church, it belongs to society as a complete.”
In 2023, Pope Francis invited Omella to affix his nine-member kitchen cupboard of cardinals to advise him on questions of governance.
If the conclave decides the Church wants a brand new strategy, then this proximity will depend in opposition to Omella.
