Ordained to the priesthood in 1956, named to the episcopate in 1979, and created a cardinal in 2003, Lozano Barragán was President of the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers from 1996 to 2009.
Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán / Public domain.Rome, Italy, Apr 20, 2022 / 07:00 am (CNA).Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán died Wednesday morning in Rome at the age of 89.The Mexican cardinal is remembered for his service at the Vatican as the president of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Health Care Workers, where he was a strong voice of opposition to abortion and euthanasia for more than a decade.With the death of Barragán on April 20, the College of Cardinals is made up of 210 cardinals of which 117 can cast a vote in a potential conclave. Barragán was born on Jan. 26, 1933 in the Mexican city of Toluca, 30 miles southwest of Mexico City.He received his first communion in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, where he would later be ordained a bishop and would offer his first Mass as a cardinal, according to Vatican News.Six months after he became pope, Pope Francis visited Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán in the hospital, where the cardinal was being treated.