Abdón Cifuentes

Who was Abdón Cifuentes?

Abdón Cifuentes Espinoza, GCSG was one of Chile's most significant Catholic politicians in the nineteenth century.

He was the son of José Maria Cifuentes Olivares and Paula Espinoza Pinto in San Felipe, Chile. He married Luz Gómez, with whom he fathered 13 children. Cifuentes attended the Instituto Nacional and then studied law at the Universidad de Chile, receiving his law degree in 1861. Cifuentes went on to become a professor at the Colegio San Luis and then the Instituto Nacional. In 1882, he was named a member of the Faculty of Philosophy & Humanities of the Universidad de Chile, and in 1889 he became professor of constitutional rights at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.

Because of the perceived need for Catholic elements to combat liberals in the press, Cifuentes made contributions to various Chilean periodicals. Together with his former student and fellow Catholic intellectual Zorobabel Rodríguez, Cifuentes founded the daily newspaper El Independiente in 1864. In 1867, Cifuentes helped form the Sociedad de Amigos del País and in 1883 he was one of the founders of the Unión Católica de Chile.