José María Caro Rodríguez

José María Caro Rodríguez (around 1950)

Statue of the cardinal in front of the Catedral Metropolitana de Santiago

Sarcophagus in a chapel in the right aisle of the Catedral Metropolitana de Santiago

José María Cardinal Caro Rodríguez (born June 23, 1866 in San Antonio de Petrel , Pichilemu , Región del Libertador General Bernardo O'Higgins , † December 4, 1958 in Santiago de Chile ) was Archbishop of Santiago de Chile .

Life

Youth and Early Years of the Priesthood

José María Caro Rodríguez was the fourth of nine children of José María Caro Rodríguez Martínez, the local mayor, and his wife. He attended school in Ciruelos, to which he had to walk five kilometers every day. At the same time, Ramón Jiménez Saavedra, a canon of the cathedral chapter of Santiago, bought a farm nearby, where he celebrated mass every day during the summer months. The young José María ministered to him.

Soon the canon proposed to him the priestly career. In March of this year, he traveled to Santiago with his father to take the seminary entrance exam. In 1887 he began to study theology and the Greek language and received language lessons in the seminary . The newly appointed Archbishop of Santiago, Mariano Casanova y Casanova , sent him to Rome with some other students to continue his studies at the Pontifical Latin American College “Pius” and at the Pontifical Gregorian University .

Despite a serious lung disease, he received the sacrament of ordination on December 20, 1890 . He received his doctorate in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University. In 1891 he returned to Chile when the country was torn by civil war . He taught philosophy at the seminary in Santiago and worked as a pastor in several hospitals and parishes, including pastor in Mamina from March to December 1899. In 1900 he returned to the seminary as professor of theology.

Cardinal coat of arms

bishop

Pope Pius X appointed him on May 6, 1911 Vicar Apostolic of Tarapacá and on January 5, 1912 titular Bishop of Mylasa . The Apostolic Internuntius in Chile, Enrico Sibilia , donated him episcopal ordination on April 28 of the same year in the Cathedral of Santiago de Chile, co- consecrators were Luis Izquierdo Vargas , Bishop of Concepción , and Miguel Claro Vázquez , Auxiliary Bishop in Santiago de Chile. As a motto he chose Deus refugium nostrum et virtus (“God is our refuge and strength”. Psalm 46.2  EU ).

Pope Pius XI appointed him on December 14, 1925 Bishop of La Serena . There he wrote most of his books. With the elevation of La Serena to the archbishopric, José María Caro became its first archbishop on May 20, 1939.

On October 14, 1939, he was appointed Archbishop of Santiago. As such, he was the driving force behind the construction of the Votive Church Templo Votivo de Maipú (Basilica of Our Lady of Mount Carmel) as thanks for the victory over the Spanish army in the war of independence.

On the day of his appointment as Archbishop, he paid an official visit to the President, Pedro Aguirre Cerda , a member of the anti-clerical and Masonic Radical Party . He managed to normalize relations with the anti-clerical and liberal government that ruled Chile during these years. He sponsored the charitable work Hogar de Cristo by the Jesuit Alberto Hurtado (1901–1952, canonized in 2005 ). When he died, he prayed the Angelus Domini .

cardinal

On December 23, 1945 it was announced that Pope Pius XII. Archbishop Caro Rodríguez will appoint cardinal in the consistory in February next year. On February 18, 1946, he was the first Chilean to accept him as a cardinal priest pro hac vice with the titular church of Santa Maria della Scala in the college of cardinals .

He took part in the 1958 conclave . On December 4th of the same year, suffering from pneumonia, he received the anointing of the sick . José María Caro Rodríguez died the next day at 1:20 p.m. in Santiago de Chile at the age of 92. His remains rest in a chapel in the right aisle of the Catedral Metropolitana de Santiago. Until April 2006 his remains were in the new archiepiscopal crypt of the Catedral Metropolitana de Santiago.

Cardinal Caro Rodríguez was the recipient of numerous orders from foreign governments.

His beatification process began in 1968.

Fonts

• Fundamentos de la Fe
• Porque Creo
• El Matrimonio Cristiano
• El Misterio de la Masonería
• La Iglesia y los Obreros

literature

• Joaquín Fuenzalida Morande (ed.): Autobiografía del Eminentísimo y Reverendísimo, Señor Cardenal D. María José Caro Rodríguez, primer cardenal chileno. Apuntes y recuerdos, documentos importantes. Francisco Carrión, Santiago de Chile 1969.
• Augusto Salinas Fuenzalida: Un pastor santo. El eminentísmo Señor Cardenal Don José María Caro Rodríguez, 1866–1958. Editorial Andrés Bello, Santiago de Chile 1981.
• Benjamín Silva Torrealba: Evangelizando Tarapacá: Iglesia regional bajo los ojos de José María Caro, 1911–1926. In: Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia en Chile. ISSN  0716-1662 , vol. 27 (2009), pp. 135-148.

Web links

• Caro Rodríguez, José María. In: Salvador Miranda : The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church. ( Florida International University website), accessed August 7, 2016.
• Entry on José María Caro Rodríguez on catholic-hierarchy.org ; accessed on August 7, 2016.
• Biography of José María Caro Rodríguez (Spanish)
• Biography and beatification process of José María Caro Rodríguez (Spanish)

predecessor	Office	successor
Martín Rucker Sotomayor	Apostolic Vicar of Tarapacá 1911–1925	Carlos Labbé Marquez
Carlos Silva Cotapos	Bishop of La Serena 1925–1939	---
---	Archbishop of La Serena 1939	Juan Subercaseaux Errázuriz
José Horacio Campillo Infante	Archbishop of Santiago de Chile 1939–1958	Raúl Silva Henríquez SDS
José Horacio Campillo Infante	Rector of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile 1939–1958	Alfredo Silva Santiago