| Styles of Norberto Rivera Carrera |
|
|---|---|
| Reference style | His Eminence |
| Spoken style | Your Eminence |
| Informal style | Cardinal |
| See | Mexico |
Norberto Rivera Carrera (born on June 6, 1942 in La Purísima, Durango) is a Mexican Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He is the current Archbishop of Mexico City and the current Primate Archbishop of Mexico, and was elevated to the cardinalate in 1998.
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Norberto Rivera Carrera was born in La Purísima, a small town outside Tepehuanes, to Ramón Rivera Cháidez and Soledad Carrera; he has a sister who is a nun. His father immigrated to and worked in the United States in order to support the family. Rivera entered the seminary of Durango in 1955. He later went to Rome to study at the Pontifical Gregorian University, from where he obtained his licentiate in theology. He was ordained to the priesthood by Pope Paul VI on July 3, 1966.
From 1967 to 1985, Rivera did pastoral work in Durango and Zacatecas, as well as 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.
On November 5, 1985, Rivera was appointed Bishop of Tehuacán by Pope John Paul II. He received his episcopal consecration on the following December 21 from Archbishop Antonio López Aviña, with Archbishops Adolfo Suárez Rivera and Rosendo Huesca Pacheco serving as co-consecrators. During his tenure, he headed the Mexican Episcopal Conference's Commission for the Family (1989–1995) and the Family Section of the Latin American Episcopal Conference (1993–1995).
Rivera was later promoted to Archbishop of Mexico City, and thus de facto Primate Archbishop of Mexico, on June 13, 1995. John Paul II created him Cardinal-Priest of S. Francesco d'Assisi a Ripa Grande in the consistory of February 21, 1998. During his tenure, Juan Diego, to whom the iconic Our Lady of Guadalupe reportedly appeared, was canonized. Rivera was one of the cardinal electors who participated in the 2005 papal conclave, which elected Pope Benedict XVI. He was suggested as a possible choice as pope.[1]
Within the Latin American Episcopal Conference, Rivera served as President of the Episcopal Committee of Culture from 2004 to 2006. He also holds membership in the Pontifical Council for the Family, Congregation for the Clergy, and Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in the Roman Curia.
Rivera Carrera 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 is seen as a conservative on virtually all church matters: in 1990, as Bishop of Tehuacán, he closed a seminary that he charged was teaching "Marxist" theology; in 1996, he won a showdown by forcing the abbot of the basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe to resign who had publicly questioned the historical truth of Mary's appearance to Juan Diego.[2] Seen as an affable, friendly man, Rivera is best known for his opposition to abortion and artificial birth control and for his insistence on strict church discipline[3]
During the Supreme Court of Mexico's debate on legalizing abortion, His Eminence, The Lord Cardinal Rivera Carrera (this is the formal and proper honorific title given to Cardinals in many Hispanic-speaking formerly Spanish countries, which emphasizes their status as Princes of the Church), Metropolitan Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico City and as such, the Roman Catholic Primate of Mexico, had this to say in a Catholic News Agency online article featured on Tuesday, September 27, 2011 article:
"Cardinal Norberto Rivera Carrera of Mexico City underscored that "abortion is never a solution" for anything.
The cardinal's comments came as the Supreme Court prepared to hold deliberations on a ruling proposed by Justice Fernando Franco that would overturn pro-life constitutional amendments enacted in numerous Mexican states and would effectively legalize abortion throughout the country.
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, the cardinal said on Sept. 25.
"We want to help women who are facing a difficult pregnancy to embrace the gift of motherhood, and the Church is set up to reach out to these women who are truly experiencing such difficulties," he said.
He also noted that at their meeting last month in Monterrey, the Mexican bishops emphacized 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.”
Human life must never be considered “a commercial product,” the cardinal added. A “child is always a gift and never a right of anyone.”
“He has unique dignity that is personal and unrepeatable, and therefore the technological means for assisting in procreation must always respect this truth and avoid replacing the logic of love with the logic of reproduction as if the human being were the product of the market,” Cardinal Rivera said.[4]
| Episcopal lineage | |
| Consecrated by: | Antonio López Aviña |
| Consecrator of | |
|---|---|
| Bishop | Date of consecration |
| José de Jesús Martínez Zepeda | April 12, 1997 |
| Marcelino Hernández Rodríguez | February 5, 1998 |
| Felipe Tejeda García | March 4, 2000 |
| José Luis Fletes Santana | March 4, 2000 |
| Guillermo Rodrigo Teodoro Ortiz Mondragón | March 4, 2000 |
| Francisco Clavel Gil | June 27, 2001 |
| Catholic Church titles | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Ernesto Corripio Ahumada |
Archbishop of Mexico 1995–present |
Succeeded by Incumbent |
| Religious titles | ||
| Preceded by Rafael Ayala y Ayala |
Bishop of Tehuacan 1985–1995 |
Succeeded by Mario Espinosa Contreras |