Latin American bishops elect new council president

Montevideo, Uruguay, May 19, 2011 / 11:54 am

The bishops meeting at the 33rd General Assembly of Latin American Bishops elected a new council president on May 18.

Archbishop Aguiar Retes of Mexico succeeds the Brazilian Cardinal Raymundo Damasceno Assis as head of the Latin American bishops' council.

Archbishop Retes' term will run  2011 – 2015. He is also president of the Mexican bishops' conference.

The archbishop was born in 1950, in the Mexican cit of Tepic. He was ordained a priest in 1973 and was sent to Rome to study at the Pontifical Latin American College.

He returned to Mexico and was rector of the Tepic Seminary from 1978 – 1991. Later, he went back to Rome and obtained a doctorate in Biblical Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University. 
 
Between 1996 and 1997 he was a professor of Sacred Scripture at the Pontifical University of Mexico and rector of the John XXIII residence for priests there.

He was named Bishop of Texcoco on May 28, 1997, and was ordained a bishop on June 29 of the same year.