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Norberto Rivera Carrera

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Diocese
  
Mexico

Name
  
Norberto Carrera

Appointed
  
June 13, 1995

Denomination
  
Roman Catholic

Consecration
  
December 21, 1985


Nationality
  
Mexican

Ordination
  
July 3, 1966

Rank
  
Cardinal-Priest

Role
  
Primate

Norberto Rivera Carrera 20150821fitzajpg

Other posts
  
Cardinal-Priest of S. Francesco d'Assisi a Ripa GrandeMember of Council for the Economy

Born
  
6 June 1942 (age 81) La Purisima, Durango, Mexico (
1942-06-06
)

Previous post
  
Roman Catholic Bishop of Tehuacan (1985–1995)


Created cardinal
  
February 21, 1998

50 Aniversario de Ordenación Sacerdotal del Emmo. Sr. Cardenal Norberto Rivera Carrera


Norberto Rivera Carrera (born 6 June 1942) is a Mexican prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He has been the Archbishop of Mexico City since 1995. He was elevated to the rank of cardinal in 1998.

Contents

Mensaje del cardenal norberto rivera carrera


Early life and ministry

Norberto Rivera Carrera Norberto Rivera pide perdn a los que quotha ofendido o

Norberto Rivera Carrera was born in La Purísima, a small town in Tepehuanes Municipality, to Ramón Rivera Cháidez and Soledad Carrera; he has a sister who is a nun. His father immigrated to the United States to support the family. Rivera entered the seminary of Durango in 1955. He later studied at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, where he obtained his licentiate in theology. He was ordained to the priesthood by Pope Paul VI on 3 July 1966.

Norberto Rivera Carrera Norberto Rivera llama a prepararse para la Navidad Nota

From 1967 to 1985, Rivera did pastoral work in Durango and Zacatecas while serving as a professor of dogmatic theology and the prefect of discipline at the Durango seminary. He also directed Social Communications for the Archdiocese of Durango, was the diocesan advisor to the Christian Family Movement, and taught ecclesiology at the Pontifical University of Mexico from 1982 to 1985. While at the Pontifical University, he founded the Movement for the Days of Christian Life.

Episcopal career

Norberto Rivera Carrera Resposta exemplar do Cardeal Rivera perante as exigncias

On 5 November 1985, Pope John Paul II appointed Rivera Bishop of Tehuacán. Archbishop Antonio López Aviña consecrated him bishop on 21 December with Archbishops Adolfo Suárez Rivera and Rosendo Huesca Pacheco as co-consecrators. He headed the Mexican Episcopal Conference's Commission for the Family from 1989 to 1995 and the Family Section of the Latin American Episcopal Conference from 1993 to 1995.

Rivera was named Archbishop of Mexico City on 13 June 1995, which made him ex officio Primate of Mexico. John Paul II made him Cardinal-Priest of S. Francesco d'Assisi a Ripa Grande in the consistory of 21 February 1998.

In 2001, he called changes of sexual abuse on the part of Marcial Maciel Degollado, the leader of the Legion of Christ, "a plot." In 2002, Rivera criticized the US media for its coverage of clergy sexual abuse. He called it "an orchestrated plan for striking at the prestige of the Church." He compared it to "what happened in the past century with the persecutions in Mexico, in Spain, in Nazi Germany and in communist countries."

Rivera was one of the cardinal electors who participated in the 2005 papal conclave that elected Pope Benedict XVI. He was mentioned as a possible choice for pope at the time, as he had been years earlier.

Within the Latin American Episcopal Conference, Rivera served as President of the Episcopal Committee of Culture from 2004 to 2006. He is also a member of the Pontifical Council for the Family, the Congregation for the Clergy, and the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. He was made a member of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life in 2014.

He is seen as a strong advocate of social justice: his criticism of globalization and political corruption so annoyed Mexico's Salinas government that it threatened to adopt a law forbidding priests from commenting on politics.

Rivera Carrera a conservative on virtually all church matters. In 1990, as Bishop of Tehuacán, he closed a seminary that he said was teaching Marxist theology. In 1996, he forced the resignation of the abbot of the basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe after he had questioned the historical truth of Mary's appearance to Juan Diego. He denounced the legalization of same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples in 2009 and 2010. He said: "Our children and youth run the grave risk of seeing these types of unions as normal and they can falsely understand that sexual differences are simply a personality type.... Homosexual acts, in effect, close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not come from a true affective and sexual complementarity."

In 2011, as the Supreme Court of Mexico prepared to deliberate on a ruling proposed by Justice Fernando Franco that would overturn anti-abortion constitutional amendments enacted in numerous Mexican states. Rivera Carrera said that "abortion is never a solution for anything." On 25 September he said: "The Church always reaches out to pregnant women who are being pressured at work, by family members or friends to remind each one of them of the great value of motherhood." He noted that the Mexican bishops emphasized that the "taking of human life through the various abortifacient techniques must not be tolerated, and the taking of the life a human being, even in its initial phases, is not licit."

He was one of the cardinal electors who participated in the 2013 papal conclave that elected Pope Francis.

On 8 March 2014, Francis named him a member of the new Council for Economic Affairs, which oversees the work of the Secretariat for the Economy, which has financial regulatory authority over all departments of the Roman Curia.

On 13 February 2016, Francis addressed the bishops of Mexico and appeared to castigate them: "Do not lose time or energy in secondary things, in gossip or intrigue, in conceited schemes of careerism, in empty plans for superiority, in unproductive groups that seek benefits or common interests. Do not allow yourselves to be dragged into gossip and slander." In March, an editorial in the newspaper of the Mexico City Archdiocese defended the bishops and said that the pope had received "bad advice." Observers identified Rivera as both a target of the Pope's speech and the source of the editorial response.

Sexual abuse case

Beginning in 1989, Los Angeles prosecutors pursued a Mexican priest on charges of sex abuse while stationed in the US for more than a decade and a lawsuit filed there charged that as Bishop of Tehuacán and Los Angesles Cardinal Roger Mahony shielded a priest abuser. Rivera said that when he approved the priest's transfer to Los Angeles, he had heard "accusations of homosexuality, but not of pedophilia." Rivera asked the Vatican to defrock the priest in 2007.

References

Norberto Rivera Carrera Wikipedia