Alfonso López Trujillo

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Alfonso Cardinal López Trujillo (born 8 November 1935) is a Colombian Cardinal Bishop of the Roman Catholic Church and president of the Pontifical Council for the Family.

[edit] Biography

Born in 1935 in Villahermosa, Tolima, López Trujillo moved to Bogotá as a young boy and attended university and then seminary there. He completed his studies in Rome, earning a doctorate in philosophy from the Angelicum.

He was ordained as a priest on 13 November 1960 and, after studying in Rome for an additional two years, returned to Bogota where he taught philosophy at the local seminary for four years. In 1968, he organized the new pastoral department of the archdiocese of Bogotá, and from 1970 to 1972, he was Vicar General of the archdiocese. In early 1971, Pope Paul VI appointed him titular archbishop of Boseta and Auxiliary of Bogotá.

In 1972, López Trujillo was elected general secretary of the Latin American Episcopal Confederence, a post he held until 1984. One of his major accomplishments during that period was organized the third general confederence of Latin American Bishops in 1979, in which Pope John Paul II participated. That same year, he became Archbishop of Medellín.

Styles of Alfonso Cardinal López Trujillo

Reference style	His Eminence
Spoken style	Your Eminence
Informal style	Cardinal
See	Frascati (suburbicarian), Medellín (emeritus)

López Trujillo was proclaimed Cardinal by John Paul II in the consistory of 2 February 1983 , became the youngest cardinal until 1991 and promoted to the order of Cardinal Bishops on 17 November 2001. Since 1990, he has been president of the Pontifical Council for the Family and, since 1991, Archbishop emeritus of Medellín. As president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, he advocated abstinence as the only 100% effective solution in preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS[1]. He reaffirmed the Church's view that condoms are immoral [2] and has also controversially sought to discourage their use among Catholics by emphasising their less than absolute effectiveness [3]. He was one of the cardinals considered papabile at the 2005 Papal conclave to elect a successor to Pope John Paul II and participated in that conclave, which selected Pope Benedict XVI, as a cardinal elector. Under current rules, if the next papal election takes place after the 80th birthday of Angelo Cardinal Sodano, Dean of the College of Cardinals, in November 2007, Cardinal Lopez Trujillo will preside over the conclave.