Toribio Ticona Porco


Toribio Ticona Porco is a Bolivian prelate of the Catholic Church. He was Prelate of the Territorial Prelature of Corocoro from 1992 to 2012 after serving as Auxiliary Bishop of Potosí from 1986 to 1992. Pope Francis made him a cardinal on 28 June 2018.

Biography

Toribio Ticona Porco was born in Atocha in the Potosi Department of Bolivia, on 25 April 1937. He was raised by his mother and never knew his father. He worked shining shoes and selling newspaper, was a bricklayer's assistant and an auto mechanic and worked in a brewery. He became a Catholic under the influence of Belgian missionaries. After working as a miner to support his mother and younger brother, he studied philosophy and theology at the seminary in Sucre and was ordained on 29 January 1967. He did further studies at the Pastoral Institute of CELAM and at the Center Lumen Vitae in Brussels.
As a priest in Chacarilla, a mining town of 2,000 people, he was mayor for 14 years.
On 5 April 1986, Pope John Paul II appointed him Titular Bishop of Timici and Auxiliary Bishop Bishop of Potosí, and he was consecrated a bishop on 31 May 1986.
On 4 June 1992, John Paul appointed him Prelate of the Territorial Prelature of Corocoro.
Pope Benedict XVI accepted his resignation on 29 June 2012.
On 20 May 2018 Pope Francis announced he would make Ticona a cardinal on 28 June. Ticona learned of the surprise appointment while visiting his mother's grave near Quillacollo. At the 28 June consistory, he was assigned the titular church of Santi Gioacchino ed Anna al Tuscolano. Bolivian President Evo Morales attended the ceremony and said he witnessed the creation of "our first indigenous cardinal and worker" with "profound happiness and joy". As Ticona had already reached the age of 80, he was ineligible to participate in a papal conclave.