The Salesian Cardinals

Don Bosco’s Sons Who Became Cardinals

Abp. Raul Silva Henriquez (1907-1999)

On Sept. 30, the Salesian rector major, Fr. Angel Fernandez Artime, will become the 20th cardinal from among Don Bosco's Salesians.  ANS has planned a series of articles on some (or all) of his predecessors.

(ANS – Rome – Sept. 14, 2023) – Lawyer, Salesian of Don Bosco, and bishop, first as ordinary of the diocese of Valparaiso and then, for over 20 years, as archbishop of Santiago (1961-1983) and primate of Chile: Raul Silva Henriquez (1907-1999), the third son of Don Bosco to have been called by a Pontiff to serve the Church in the service of the cardinalate was all these things.

Born on September 27, 1907, in Talca, Chile, to Ricardo Silva Silva and Mercedes Henriquez Encina, he was the 16th of 19 children, 5 of whom died during childhood. His father was a farmer and entrepreneur, from an ancient family of Portuguese origin that had settled in Chile at the beginning of the 17th century.

He attended the prestigious Liceo Aleman in Santiago, then the Law School at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, where he obtained his law degree in 1929. Having entered the Salesians in Santiago on January 27, 1930, he continued his studies at the Pontifical Salesian Athenaeum in Turin, where he obtained his doctorates in theology and canon law.

Ordained a priest on July 3, 1938, in Turin, he was first a professor at the International Salesian Theological School at La Cisterna, Santiago (1938-1943), then the director of several Salesian institutes, schools, and vocational training centers. His educational activity was always wide-ranging, and in fact he was also founder and president of the Federation of Catholic Schools of Chile in 1945, and founder of the Rumbos magazine.

His pastoral attention was extensive: he perceived and cared for the needs of religious (in 1953 he organized the First  Consecrated Life Congress), migrants (he was the organizer and first director of the Chilean Catholic Institute of Migration), and the poor (as national president of Caritas and then as president of Caritas Internationalis).

Named bishop of Valparaiso on October 24, 1959, he received episcopal ordination on November 29 of the same year, choosing as his motto Caritas Christi urget nos.

In 1961 he was appointed archbishop of Santiago, and he was created cardinal by Pope John XXIII in the consistory of March 19, 1962.

As a bishop and a cardinal he was a staunch defender of human rights, systematically violated in his country after 1973 by the military junta that governed the country, and in the absence of a political opposition that had been silenced, imprisoned, or exiled, under his leadership the Church became the only effective resistance to the regime. He established the Committee for Peace Cooperation in Chile in 1973, followed by the Vicariate of Solidarity, a shelter for victims of human rights violations, who were provided with legal aid and medical assistance during the political and military crisis.

In addition, it is believed that Cardinal Silva played an important role in convincing the governments of Chile and Argentina to allow Pope John Paul II to mediate their border dispute and avoid war in 1978.

For all these initiatives, on December 11 of that same year he received the Human Rights Award from the United Nations.

As archbishop of Santiago, he anticipated the spring of the Second Vatican Council, of which he became first an active protagonist and then an eloquent witness, courageously proposing its evangelical freshness, the warm tone of conversation with modern human beings, the communication of salvation. Under his guidance, the Chilean Church gradually experienced a new style of pastoral care, in communion, in collegial-based analyses and decisions.

An essential pastor in his traits, he inspired confidence in his collaborators and showed himself to be an effective father to those who turned to him for help. With him, the ecclesial communities implemented the preferential option for the promotion of the dignity of people, starting with the neediest and most discriminated against, especially during the transition from democracy to a practically Marxist government and then to the military regime.

His wide-ranging work – he was also president of Caritas International – put him in contact with heads of state and politicians of other peoples, other local Churches. With them he thought big. His extensive knowledge of world problems and legal competence, which he put at the service of the universal Church presiding over episcopal and expert commissions, spurred him to hypothesize the United States of Latin America as the cradle and radiant center of the civilization of love in the shadow of the redeeming Cross.

He died on April 9, 1999, in the Salesian retirement home in La Florida, on the outskirts of Santiago, due to pneumonia, complicated by renal dysfunction. He is buried in the crypt of St. James Cathedral. The Chilean democratic government of the time declared 5 days of national mourning in his honor.