| His Eminence Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne Archbishop of Lima |
|
|---|---|
| Cardinal presbyter of St. Camillus de Lellis | |
| See | Archdiocese of Lima |
| Predecessor | Augusto Vargas Alzamora † |
| Other posts | Archbishop of Lima (Actually) Archbishop of Ayacucho (1995-1999) Auxiliary Bishop of Ayacucho (1988-1995) |
| Orders | |
| Ordination | 21 August 1977 |
| Consecration | 3 July 1988 by Juan Landázuri |
| Created Cardinal | 21 February 2001 |
| Rank | Cardinal-Priest of St. Camillus de Lellis |
| Personal details | |
| Born | December 28, 1943 Lima |
| Nationality | Peruvian |
| Styles of Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne |
|
|---|---|
| Reference style | His Eminence |
| Spoken style | Your Eminence |
| Informal style | Cardinal |
| See | Lima |
Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne (born in Lima, 28 December 1943) is a Cardinal Priest and Archbishop of Lima in the Roman Catholic Church. He is a member of the prominent conservative Peruvian Thorne family, and one of two cardinals who are members of Opus Dei, the other being Julián Herranz Casado.
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Cardinal Cipriani attended the Colegio Santa Maria Marianistas, a Catholic school, and as a young man he was a champion basketball player. He studied industrial engineering at the Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería in Lima, Peru.
After working as an engineer, he was ordained as a priest for the Personal Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei in 1977; he also holds a doctorate in theology from the University of Navarra. In his service to the church, he did pastoral work in Lima, taught at the Pontifical Faculty of Theology, and was regional vicar for Peru and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Piura.
In 1988, he was appointed titular Bishop of Turuzi and Auxiliary of Ayacucho, and was promoted to Archbishop of Ayacucho in 1995. During the 1996–1997 Japanese embassy hostage crisis, he attempted to negotiate a peaceful settlement, and ministered to Japanese and Peruvian hostages.
Named Archbishop of Lima in 1999, Cipriani was proclaimed Cardinal-Priest of San Camillo de Lellis by Pope John Paul II in the consistory of 21 February 2001, with the title Cardinal-Priest of San Camillo de Lellis. His appointment met with protests from a section and left-leaning groups in Peru due to his close relationship with the right-wing regime of Alberto Fujimori.
He was one of the cardinal electors who participated in the 2005 papal conclave that selected Pope Benedict XVI, and was himself considered papabile — a possible successor to the papacy.
The cardinal is a member of the Personal Prelature Opus Dei; he was the first priest incardinated into Opus Dei to be made a cardinal. He is also Grand Chancellor of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. In 2008 he banned receiving Communion on the hand, instead ordering that the faithful take it on the tongue. He said that "the relaxed attitude of many priests" was to blame for a decline in reverence for the Eucharist among the faithful. [1]
On 19 July 2011, he was named as a member of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America by Pope Benedict XVI.
In 1997, the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PCUP), in Lima, barred a gay student organisation from holding any events. The organisation, Parenthesis Collective (Colectivo Paréntesis), was formed by two third-year students, Rodrigo Vecco and Bernardo Nieuwland. In addition, the university distributed a pamphlet, “Sexual Identity: Is It Possible to Choose?” which described homosexuality as a curable illness. The pamphlet was prepared at the request of the university’s chancellor, Cardinal Cipriani.
In 2005, during a Mass marking the 36th anniversary of Ricardo Palma University, Cipriani commented on the recent legalisation of homosexual unions in Spain. He denounced the existence of a worldwide campaign that sells “damaged goods,” calling a relationship that is “not between a man a woman” marriage, and he warned that by legalising homosexual unions, society is disfigured. He warned that, “In today’s world, evil disguises itself as good, it is imposed on others, and woe to him who does not accept it!”. The cardinal called on the faithful not to refer to relationships that “are not between a man and a woman” as marriage.
“Call it what you want but don’t sell damaged goods, don’t traffic in that dictatorship of moral relativism in which there is nothing good, only opinions and trends of thought.”
In March 2007, PCUP filed a lawsuit against Mr. Walter Muñoz Cho, who was appointed to the Board of Directors by Cardinal Cipriani. In 2010 legal proceedings between the Archdiocese and the PCUP began on the issue of autonomy of senior academic appointments and the University's property rights.
He was also accused of hampering the efforts of Jesuit human rights workers in Ayacucho while he was the Archbishop of that troubled province of Peru. Global intra-ecclesial rivalries between groups, and philosophical tendencies (especially, between the more liberal Jesuits and the conservative Opus Dei), do play a part in this row. Several Peruvian Bishops who represent the leftist liberation theology of Gustavo Gutierrez are decided opponents of the conservative Cardinal Cipriani Thorne.
Cardinal Cipriani said that people who believed that the La Cantuta massacre was committed by the Army of Peru were guilty of "treason of the fatherland."[2] The massacre was later proved to have indeed been committed by members of the Army Intelligence Service, working within the Grupo Colina.
Cipriani has considered that conditions in Peru argue for the permissibility of capital punishment in certain very limited cases, where the criminal poses to society a real threat that probably cannot be safely contained by less severe means, including life imprisonment without parole. For example, shortly after the capture of violent revolutionary Abimael Guzmán, Cardinal Cipriani Thorne expressed an opinion that the Shining Path leader should be executed. He referred to Peruvians who opposed the institution of the death penalty as "cowards".[1]
Since the early 1980s Cardinal Cipriani has been seen as showing hostility to certain human rights groups, including some led by Catholic priests and laypeople. In contrast to his predecessor, the Jesuit Augusto Vargas Alzamora, he has often been accused of not giving heed to claims of human rights abuses purportedly committed by Peruvian state forces during the 1980s and 1990s.
Some remarks of his have been seen as questionable, most famously perhaps his reference, in a 1994 interview with Caretas in which he expounded his views on human rights, to the Human Rights Coordinator (the director of this organization is Rocío Silva Santisteban a well known marxist activist) as "esa cojudez", which roughly translates to "that bullshit."[1]
| Preceded by Augusto Vargas Alzamora |
Archbishop of Lima 9 January 1999–incumbent |
Succeeded by incumbent |