Adolfo Suárez Rivera

Who was Adolfo Suárez Rivera?

Adolfo Antonio Suárez Rivera was a Mexican Cardinal Priest in the Roman Catholic Church who also served as Bishop of Tepic, Tlalnepantla and Archbishop of Monterrey.

Suárez Rivera studied classical literature at the conciliar seminary of Chiapas in San Cristóbal, where he was ordained a priest in 1952, and then philosophy at the archdiocesan seminary of Xalapa and the Pontifical Seminary of Montezuma in Montezuma, New Mexico, in the United States. After these studies, he completed a doctorate in theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome.

Suárez Rivera worked for about ten years as a professor of classical literature and philosophy at the diocesan seminary of San Cristóbal de las Casas, then was a department head and secretary in the Archdiocesan Curia. He advised the Christian Family Movement and helped found the Union for Mutual Episcopal Aid in the 1960s and 1970s, in addition to serving as a parish priest.

In 1971, Suárez Rivera was named Bishop of Tepic. From 1979 to 1983, he served as an adjunct member of the Congregation for Bishops, and he was a delegate to the 1983 Sixth General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on Reconciliation and Penance.