Juan Francisco Fresno Larraín

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Coat of arms of Juan Francisco Cardinal Fresno Larraín.

Juan Francisco Cardinal Fresno Larraín (born July 26, 1914 in Santiago de Chile , † October 14, 2004 ibid) was Archbishop of La Serena , later of Santiago de Chile .

Life

Coming from a better family, he was the fourth of five children to study theology in Santiago and Rome and was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Santiago de Chile on December 18, 1937 .

First pastor in Santiago, in 1958 he became bishop of the newly established Diocese of Copiapó . He was ordained episcopal on August 15, 1958 by the Archbishop of La Serena, Alfredo Cifuentes Gómez , co-consecrators were Francisco de Borja Valenzuela Ríos , Bishop of Antofagasta , and José Manuel Santos Ascarza , Bishop of Valdivia .

As a bishop he was a participant in the Second Vatican Council . In 1967 he was made Archbishop of La Serena and in June 1983 Archbishop of Santiago. There he was initially considered more cautious and conservative than his predecessor Raúl Silva Henríquez , who had bluntly denounced the murderous acts of the dictatorship , and found the favor of Augusto Pinochet , who had many influential friends in Rome.

However, due to his efforts to compensate on all sides, he soon got the nickname "the red one". In 1985 he was accepted into the College of Cardinals by Pope John Paul II as a cardinal priest with the titular church of Santa Maria Immacolata di Lourdes a Boccea and moderated the national agreement of the forbidden parties to restore democracy . In 1987, at his instigation, Pope John Paul II visited Chile, which was felt to be a difficult tightrope act. The following year, Pinochet lost the referendum on his presidency . Fresno retired in 1990, the year of the first democratic election, but remained highly respected around the world.

A school in San Miguel de Puente Alto was named after him.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Colegio Cardenal Juan Francisco Fresno Larrain en Mertropolitana de Santiago, Puente Alto on colegionsenchile.cl, accessed on August 3, 2016 (Spanish)
predecessor Office successor
- Bishop of Copiapó
1958–1967
Carlos Camus
Alfredo Cifuentes Gomez Archbishop of La Serena
1967–1983
Bernardino Piñera Carvallo
Raúl Silva Henríquez Archbishop of Santiago de Chile
1983–1990
Carlos Oviedo Cavada