Ricardo Blázquez

Ricardo Blázquez Pérez was born in Villanueva del Campillo, Ávila, on 13 April 1942, the oldest of seven children of humble farmers. He entered Ávila's minor seminary at thirteen, was ordained a priest on 18 February 1967, and took a doctorate in theology at the Gregorian (1972), researching the Resurrection in Pannenberg's Christology alongside Pannenberg himself in Munich. From 1974 to 1988 he taught theology at the Pontifical University of Salamanca — dean 1978–81, vice-rector, then Grand Chancellor from 2000 to 2004.

Consecrated bishop on 29 May 1988 as auxiliary of Santiago de Compostela, he became Bishop of Palencia (1992), Bishop of Bilbao (1995), and on 13 March 2010 Metropolitan Archbishop of Valladolid, serving until 17 June 2022. He led Spain's bishops' conference as president (2005–08, 2014–20) and vice-president (2008–14), attended the family synods of 2014 and 2015, and in 2010 conducted the apostolic visitation of Regnum Christi. Francis created him a cardinal on 14 February 2015, with the title of Santa Maria in Vallicella. Described as “a theological moderate and perennial counterweight to Spain's more doctrinally conservative prelates,” he is also known for austerity: on arriving in Valladolid he cut his own salary and drove his own Volkswagen Golf. His motto is Resurrexit — “he has risen.”