Tuluá, January 1953. The bells of San Bartolomé were still ringing as they should have rung in all the churches in Colombia. That day, Monsignor Crisanto Luque was named cardinal. The first Colombian in the entire history of this country, then so, so Catholic, made over the centuries in the image and likeness of the Spanish Catholic Church or by anti-clerical reactions that failed to make it turn at the time.
Last Sunday the Pope made public the appointment as cardinal of Luis José Rueda, archbishop of Bogotá, but the bells rang in no church. Perhaps he is a rather opaque bishop, who has not shone publicly for what he thinks or what he does , but that he must have a hidden grace and wisdom that has allowed the Vatican authorities to support him in his dizzying career.
Monsignor Rueda was a priest in 1989 in his native Santander. He specialized in the Alfonsina School in Rome, where they say he made the powerful links that catapulted him. He became bishop of Montelíbano in Córdoba when he turned 49 in 2012 and had already been a parish priest in various towns in his department such as Albania, Mogotes, Pinchote and Barichara, the latter town which allowed him to meet the Bogota oligarchy that settled there. shelter for seasons.
In March 2018 he was named Archbishop of Popayán and dizzyingly, in 2020, he was elevated to the Archbishopric of Bogotá and to serve as Primate of Colombia. On Sunday, just three years later, he was promoted to cardinalate.
I have followed him because for a few months he has sent us his daily homily via wasap and YouTube to opinion commentators, which made me curious, although not very deeply, because some that I have heard repeat too much the anachronistic notions of suffering, trial and death. courage as elements to face life. But opaque and vertiginous is cardinal even if they no longer ring the bells to express joy.