Barcelona, Spain, Jun 30, 2017 / 10:50 am
"Enough with the jokes," then-Archbishop Juan José Omella Omella of Barcelona said when he got the call.
But it wasn't a joke: A friend was calling him from St. Peter's Square to tell him that Pope Francis had just announced his name among the five men who were to become cardinals at a consistory which was held June 28.
After receiving the announcement, Omella continued with his plans for the day, including visiting prisoners. He met with journalists the next morning.
"Barcelona is a cosmopolitan city where people from all over the world go," he told journalists in Rome this week when asked what it means to serve from the peripheries in his city. "You only have to be at the plaza where the door of the cathedral of Barcelona is for a moment to see that there they speak all the languages, and all races and all cultures pass. Or go to the Sagrada Familia to see the amount of people who come everyday."