Juan María Huerta Muro

Juan María Huerta Muro was born in Guadalajara on 9 April 1962, the fifth of eight children of Ansurio Huerta and María Isidra Muro. He attended primary schools in Guadalajara and was accepted into the novitiate of the Friars Minor Franciscans in Guadalajara in 1981; his novitiate ran 1981 to 1982, his philosophy at the Franciscan seminary of Zapopan 1982 to 1985, and his theology at the Franciscan Theological Institute of San Pedro Garza García, Nuevo León, 1985 to 1989. Both Holy See bulletins print the institute's place as San Pedro Garza García (Nuevo Laredo); San Pedro Garza García is in Nuevo León, not Nuevo Laredo in Tamaulipas, and the bulletin error is flagged, not repeated. He obtained a licentiate in civil law from the University of Tijuana in 2004. He made solemn vows on 10 April 1988 in the Order of Friars Minor and was ordained a priest on 1 July 1989. His offices, as the 2012 bulletin gives them, were Master of Juniors and Postulants in Tijuana and Vicente Guerrero, the bulletin Italianizing the place as Vicente Guerriero; parish administrator and Dean of the Presbyteral Council of the Archdiocese of Tijuana; Minister Provincial of the Province of Blessed Fr. Junípero Serra from 2006; and Episcopal Vicar for Consecrated Life of the Archdiocese of Tijuana.

He was appointed Bishop Prelate of El Salto on 2 February 2012 by Benedict XVI and received episcopal ordination on 2 May 2012; no distinct El Salto installation was found, so that tenure codes from consecration, with installation not separately established. His consecrator and the consecration venue are unestablished: the Durango metropolitan is not inferred as principal, and neither the El Salto cathedral nor the Durango cathedral is inferred as venue. He was appointed Bishop of Xochimilco on 11 February 2025 by Francis, succeeding Andrés Vargas Peña, whose resignation was accepted the same day, and took canonical possession on 19 March 2025, the Solemnity of St Joseph, as the second Bishop of Xochimilco; present were Nuncio Joseph Spiteri, Cardinal Carlos Aguiar Retes, the six Mexico auxiliaries, and CEM president Ramón Castro Castro. His El Salto predecessor was Ruy Rendón Leal, 2005 to 2011, then to Matamoros, and El Salto has been sede vacante since 11 February 2025. His episcopal motto is Justicia, paz y gozo, Justice, peace and joy, asserted here because it stands in his own words in the possession report: la justicia, la paz y el gozo en el Espíritu Santo, que es el lema de mi escudo; the shipped motto string follows the shield and slot form, while the homily phrase carries the fuller form with en el Espíritu Santo, and that difference is recorded in the reference note.

The prelature of El Salto was erected on 10 June 1968 by the bull Non habentibus of Paul VI, AAS 61 (1969) pages 14 to 15, from Durango and Mazatlán, suffragan of Durango, with its cathedral at Santa María de Guadalupe in El Salto, Pueblo Nuevo, covering 36,000 square kilometres with 15 parishes in 2021. The diocese of Xochimilco, suffragan of Mexico, covers Xochimilco, Tláhuac, and Milpa Alta, 433 square kilometres, with 40 parishes, some 770,000 people, about 85 percent Catholic, and its cathedral at San Bernardino de Siena. Its erection date is unresolved: Desde la Fe gives 5 November 2019 and Spanish Wikipedia gives 28 September 2019, consistent with the 28 September 2019 CEM communiqué erecting the three dioceses, and neither date is asserted here. No work of his own was found: his daily Gospel reflections are ministry, not works, and an El Salto pastoral letter, if one exists, would need a prelature archive check.