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Spanish Cardinal Fernando Sebastián Aguilar, retired archbishop of Pamplona, died in Malaga Jan. 24 after suffering a stroke. He was 89.
For decades, the cardinal had been an outspoken leader who played an important role in developing the positions of the Spanish Church on issues ranging from stem-cell research to the importance of evangelization, from how Christianity can confront terrorism to “the Christian vocation and its forms,” which was the topic of the still-unpublished book he completed shortly before his death.
Pope Francis named him a cardinal in 2014.
Born in Calatayud, Spain, he joined the Claretians at age 15. He was ordained in 1953 and earned his doctorate in theology from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome four years later.
His many assignments and activities included founding the prominent Catholic magazine, Iglesia Viva, in 1966, and serving as rector of the Pontifical University of Salamanca from 1971 to 1979, when St. John Paul II named him bishop of Leon.
In 1982, he was elected secretary-general of the Spanish bishops’ conference. A year later, he resigned as bishop of Leon to dedicate more time to the bishops’ conference. In April 1988, he was named coadjutor archbishop of Granada and in 1993, he was transferred and became archbishop of Pamplona, a position from which he retired in 2007.—CNS
