Spanish Cardinal Miguel Ángel Ayuso dies

Shortly after the pope revealed that Spanish Cardinal Miguel Ángel Ayuso, prefect for the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue, was “very ill, at the end of his life,” O’sservatore Romano announced his death.

“As we were going to press, we received news of the passing of Spanish Cardinal Miguel Ángel Ayuso, prefect of the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue. A Comboni missionary, he was born in Seville 72 years ago. Before being called as secretary of the then-Pontifical Council that had assumed the legacy of the “Secretariat for non-Christians,” Ayuso had been dean of the Pontifical Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies (PISAI),” the Vatican newspaper said.

Francis made these statements while receiving in a private audience an international Jain delegation in the Vatican on the occasion of their meeting coordinated by the Institute of Jainism in London on the themes of diversity and inclusion.

The 72-year-old Spanish Comboni priest, who led the department responsible for relations with other religions, had been in a delicate state of health for several years. On Monday, Pope Francis asked for prayers for him.

He was a discreet and kind figure, of great intelligence and knowledge and deep faith. He was often seen walking along the Via della Conciliazione praying quietly on his way to his office. This is how many remember Cardinal Miguel Ángel Ayuso, prefect of the Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue, who died November 25, at the age of 72.

He was admitted to Gemelli Hospital. That morning, the pope, during a speech to an international Jain delegation in which representatives of the dicastery were present, mentioned the Spanish cardinal: “He is in very poor health, he is in his last moments of life,” he said.

Ayuso Guixot had been suffering from health problems for some time, which forced him to undergo repeated hospitalizations and surgical operations. That is why he was not able to accompany the pope in September on the long papal journey to Southeast Asia and Oceania, where the interreligious component was strong. One of the many “trips of fraternity,” as the cardinal, a great expert on Islam and the Arab world, like to describe Pope Francis’s visits to countries where the Catholic Church is a minority, to strengthen dialogue between religions as a priority of the pontificate. Trips that Ayuso Guixot had always been involved in, following these journeys.

In 2019, he traveled to the United Arab Emirates and Morocco in February and March as secretary of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, and in November to Thailand and Japan, as president of the same dicastery, a few weeks after being created a cardinal on October 5, 2019. He was then present during the pope’s historic trip to Iraq in March 2021, the first after a hiatus forced by the pandemic. A pilgrimage, that of the land of Abraham, which, the cardinal said in interviews, had revitalized a tormented country: After the pope’s visit, the world would not only remember it for violence and scenes of destruction, but also for the joy and jubilation of its people, despite everything.

In 2022, the head of the dicastery was with the pope in Kazakhstan and Bahrain, where he only returned twice the following year to confer episcopal ordination on Bishop Aldo Berardi, Apostolic Vicar of Northern Arabia, and for the opening of the Holy Door in Abu Dhabi on the occasion of the Jubilee of the Martyrs of Arabia. He was also present in Mongolia in September 2023. Then illness took hold of him.

The fifth of nine children in a large and deeply Catholic family, he was born June 17, 1952, in Seville, Spain. It was precisely the culture of that Andalusian city, where the tower of the cathedral – one of the largest churches in the world – had previously been the minaret of a large mosque, that strongly influenced his sensitivity, as well as his family environment. Initially, he attended the Colegio San María Claret, spending a year in the minor seminary in Seville. Later he enrolled in the Faculty of Law of the University of the city, while continuing to attend church and spiritual retreats for young people.

There he came into contact with the magazine and publications of the Comboni Missionaries of the Heart of Jesus, deciding in September 1973 to enter the congregation. He made his perpetual profession on May 2, 1980, and was ordained a priest on September 20 of the same year. He continued his studies in Rome, at the Pontifical Ubraniana University and at the Pontifical Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies (PISAI), where he obtained his licentiate in 1982.

In October of the same year, he left for Egypt, where he became parish priest of Cairo at the Latin community of the Sacred Heart in Abbasiyya, not far from Al-Azhar University, where he devoted himself to welcoming and assisting young Sudanese Catholics present in the Egyptian capital as students, emigrants, and young political refugees. This experience took him to Sudan at the time of the civil war. In 2006, he was appointed dean of Pisai, where he had previously been director of studies, when the Missionaries of Africa (the White Fathers) opened a house for priests and religious in Tunisia.

In 2007, he was appointed consultant to the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. That year, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran was appointed president. In 2012, Pope Benedict XVI appointed him secretary of the dicastery. Upon Tauran’s death, Francis appointed Ayuso prefect on May 25, 2019. An almost natural succession at the head of the Pontifical Council that handles relations with other religions. From then on, a succession of commitments, of trips to all corners of the world to testify to our Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Shinto, Confucian, and traditional religious brothers and sisters, the possibility of establishing dialogue and working together, as “brothers and sisters all.”

This article was originally published in Spanish on Religión Digital on Nov. 25, 2024.