Samuel Ruiz
| Samuel Ruiz García | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Successor | Felipe Arizmendi Esquivel |
| Orders | |
| Ordination | 1960 |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
3 November 1924 Guanajuato, Mexico |
| Died | 24 January 2011 (aged 86) Mexico City |
| Denomination | Catholic |
| Parents |
Guadalupe García Maclovio Ruiz Mejía |
Guadalupe García
Samuel Ruiz García (3 November 1924 – 24 January 2011) was a Mexican Roman Catholic prelate who served as bishop of the Diocese of San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, from 1959 until 1999. Ruiz is best known for his role as mediator during the conflict between the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) and the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), a Mexican political party which had held power for over seventy years, and whose policies were often disadvantageous to the indigenous populations of Chiapas. Inspired by Liberation Theology, which swept through the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America during the 1960s, Ruiz’s diocese helped some hundreds of thousands of indigenous Maya people in Chiapas who were among Mexico’s poorest and marginalized communities.
Samuel Ruiz García was the first of five children, born on 3 November 1924 in Guanajuato, Mexico to Guadalupe García, who worked as a maid for upper-class families, and Maclovio Ruiz Mejía, an agricultural worker. Ruiz grew up as a Catholic in a modest family during the Cristero War, a time in which the Church was being persecuted and many were killed or assassinated in Mexico by the anti-Catholic ruling government.
At the age of fifteen, Ruiz completed high school and seminary at León in Guanajuato. He continued his studies at the Gregorian University in Rome, a Jesuit institution where he focused on Sacred Scripture, earning his doctorate in 1952. In 1949 he was ordained to the priesthood.
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