Argentine Cardinal Jorge Maria Mejia, an expert at the Second Vatican Council, a longtime leader of Catholic-Jewish dialogue, and the former Vatican archivist, died in Rome Dec. 8 at the age of 91.
Pope Francis, who had visited his compatriot in the hospital just two days after being elected in March 2013, said he and Cardinal Mejia enjoyed a “long friendship.”
In a telegram Dec. 9 to the cardinal’s brother, Alejandro Mejia, the pope described the cardinal as a person who “intensely and generously served the church,” working with “fidelity and competence” in a variety of Vatican posts.
The pope also had visited the cardinal Nov. 16, stopping at a Rome clinic after a brief trip out to the papal villas at Castel Gandolfo.
Serving as the Vatican’s chief archivist and librarian from 1998 until his retirement in 2003 was the last of a broad range of Vatican posts Cardinal Mejia held after spending 27 years teaching Old Testament, biblical archaeology, Hebrew and biblical Greek at the Catholic University of Argentina in Buenos Aires.
As a “peritus,” or theological expert, at the Second Vatican Council from 1962 to 1965, then-Father Mejia earned a mention in histories of the council by leading a failed effort to persuade the council fathers not to approve a document on social communications.
Before the final vote, standing on the steps of St. Peter’s Basilica, he distributed to participating bishops a petition claiming the proposed document could be read as condoning government censorship and management of the news. Despite his efforts, the document, “Inter Mirifica,” passed overwhelmingly. And later that month, with the approval of the pope, the practice of distributing petitions at the council was banned.
Blessed Paul VI brought then-Father Mejia back to the Vatican in 1977 to serve as secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Religious Relations With the Jews. In that position, he had a hand in organizing St. John Paul II’s historic 1986 visit to Rome’s synagogue, the first such visit by a pontiff in modern times.
He also was instrumental in planning the pope’s day of prayer for peace later that year in Assisi, bringing together 150 religious leaders from around the world. Then-Bishop Mejia, in an article published in the Vatican newspaper, was one of the first to defend the event from accusations of syncretism by making a distinction between “praying together” — which he said did not happen at Assisi — and “coming together to pray.”
A month before the synagogue visit, Cardinal-designate Mejia was named vice president of what is today the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace and was named a bishop. In 1994, he was made secretary of the Congregation for Bishops and elevated to archbishop. The same year, he became secretary of the College of Cardinals.
Born Jan. 31, 1923, in Buenos Aires, he was ordained a priest in 1945.
He served briefly in a parish before being sent to Rome, where he earned a doctorate in theology in 1948 from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas — where he began a friendship with fellow student Father Karol Wojtyla, the future St. John Paul — followed two years later by an advanced degree in biblical studies from Rome’s Pontifical Biblical Institute.
He was president of the executive committee of the World Catholic Federation for the Biblical Apostolate from 1969 to 1972. Already involved in Catholic-Jewish dialogue in Argentina, from 1967 to 1977 he served as the secretary for the Department of Ecumenical and Interreligious Relations of the Latin American bishops’ council, known by its Spanish acronym as CELAM.
He was director of Criterio, an internationally known Catholic journal based in Buenos Aires, from 1955 to 1977.
St. John Paul made him a cardinal in 2001, on the same day as Pope Francis.
With Cardinal Mejia’s death, the College of Cardinals has 208 members, 112 of whom are under the age of 80 and, therefore, eligible to vote in a conclave.