Rome, Italy, Apr 19, 2008 / 14:11 pm
Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family, died Saturday of complications from diabetes. The cardinal had been in a hospital fighting different health complications for nearly four weeks before he passed away. Cardinal Trujillo, Archbishop emeritus of Medellin, Colombia, was 72.
Born on November 8, 1935 in the Colombian city of Villahermosa, he moved to the capital Bogotá when he was a young boy.
After entering seminary, he studied in Rome and obtained his doctorate in philosophy from the Angelicum, taking courses in theology and sociology and also studying Marxism. Ordained a priest on November 13, 1960, he continued his studies in Rome for another two years
Returning to Bogotá, he taught philosophy for four years at the local major seminary. In 1968, he was put in charge of a special course on Pope Paul VI’s encyclical “Populorum Progressio” that was to be presented in all the principal cities in Colombia.