Antonio María Rouco Varela was born in Vilalba, in Galicia, in August 1936 — the Holy See biography gives 24 August; Wikipedia and most secondary sources give 20 August — and ordained a priest in Salamanca on 28 March 1959. He took a doctorate in canon law at Munich (1964), his dissertation on Church–State relations in sixteenth-century Spain, and became auxiliary bishop of Santiago de Compostela in 1976 (consecrated 31 October), then Archbishop of Santiago in May 1984, hosting the 1989 World Youth Day there.
On 28 July 1994 John Paul II appointed him Archbishop of Madrid. He presided over the Spanish bishops' conference twice (1999–2005, 2008–14), officiated the wedding of Prince Felipe and Letizia Ortiz in 2004, hosted Benedict XVI for World Youth Day 2011 in Madrid, and was known as a vocal supporter of the Neocatechumenal Way. John Paul II created him a cardinal on 21 February 1998, with the title of San Lorenzo in Damaso; he voted in the conclaves of 2005 and 2013. He retired on 28 August 2014. His motto is In ecclesiae communione — “in the communion of the Church.”
Consequential Quotes
No unborn child should be denied the right to be born.
Allowing children to be born is the first and fundamental duty of the love of neighbor.
Major Works & Initiatives
Archbishop of Madrid
Twenty years in Spain's capital see.
Two World Youth Days
Hosted WYD in Santiago and in Madrid.
President of Spain's bishops
Two long terms at the conference's head.
Controversies
The culture-war primate
Rouco Varela led the Spanish Church's opposition to the Socialist government's abortion and same-sex marriage laws — positions, not personal scandal; in February 2014 he was confronted in a Madrid church by topless feminist protesters over his support for tightening the abortion law.