Rosalio José Castillo Lara

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Cardinal Rosalio José Castillo Lara JCD (September 4, 1922 – October 16, 2007) was a Venezuelan Roman Catholic cardinal.

Castillo Lara was born in San Casimiro, diocese of Maracay, in Venezuela's Aragua State, on September 4, 1922. Third son of seven children, he was ordained a priest on September 4, 1949, by his uncle, Monsignor Castillo Hernandez, Archbishop of Caracas. In 1950 he went to Italy to study canon law at the Salesian University in Turin. In September 1954, he was named professor at the faculty of canon law, at first in Turin until 1957, then in Rome until 1965. Elected Bishop of Precausa on March 26, 1973, and promoted to Archbishop on May 26, 1982. Pope John Paul II made him a cardinal during the Consistory of May 25, 1985.

Styles of Rosalio José Cardinal Castillo Lara
Reference style	His Eminence
Spoken style	Your Eminence
Informal style	Cardinal
See	Precausa (titular)

President Emeritus of the Vatican's Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See, on October 31, 1990, he was named President of the Pontifical Commission for the State of Vatican City. Cardinal Castillo Lara was also a member of the Cardinals' Supervisory Commission for the Vatican Bank (Institute for Religious Works, known as IOR).

Castillo Lara was one of the Venezuelan ecclesiastic figures most opposed to the government of Hugo Chávez. In 2006, during a Holy Mass, the cardinal made a homily asking to pray “with fervour to the Virgin Mary to save Venezuela. We are living a very grave situation, like a few times in our history”. Castillo Lara repeatedly accused Chávez of becoming increasingly authoritarian. At one point, he even recommended an exorcism for the socialist president while Chávez once called Castillo Lara "a hypocrite, bandit and devil with a cassock."^[1]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Obituary in The Times, 26 October 2007

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