Crisanto Luque Sánchez was born in
Tenjo to Heliodoro Luque and Natalia Sáchez. After studying in
Tabio, he attended the
Major Seminary of Bogotá, alongside his future successor as archbishop of the same,
Luis Concha Córdoba. Luque was
ordained to the
priesthood by Archbishop
Bernardo Herrera Restrepo on October 28, 1916, and then did
pastoral work in
Bogotá until 1931. During that period, he served as a
hospital chaplain,
vicar, and
pastor. On January 16, 1931, Luque was appointed
Auxiliary Bishop of
Tunja and
Titular Bishop of Croae. He received his
episcopal consecration on the following May 3 from Archbishop
Paolo Giobbe, with Bishops José Ignacio López Umana and Luis Adriano Díaz serving as
co-consecrators, in the
Cathedral of Bogotá. Luque served as
vicar general and
apostolic administrator before becoming
Bishop of Tunja on September 9, 1932. He was later named
Archbishop of Bogotá on July 14, 1950. On that same date, he was also made the first
Apostolic Vicar of the Colombian
Military Ordinariate.
Pope Pius XII created him
Cardinal-Priest of
Santi Cosma e Damiano in the
consistory of January 12, 1953. Luque, the first Colombian cardinal, was
papal legate to the third
National Marian Congress in 1954, and attended the first general conference of the
Latin American Episcopal Conference in 1955. In 1951, he formally asked the
Ministry of Education to remove José Rodriguez's paintings, which contained nude subjects, from the
National Museum. Luque also played a prominent role in the
civil and political crisis that affected his country from 1949 to 1958, and
participated in the
1958 papal conclave that selected
Pope John XXIII. An opponent of
President Gustavo Rojas Pinilla, the Colombian primate condemned Rojas' "
Third Force" political movement, and denounced an
oath of loyalty he demanded from his
political party in June 1957 as "illicit" and his party "dangerous". To the
military junta that replaced Rojas, he also threatened to withdraw the Church's support if it did not turn over power in
free elections. The cardinal died from a
pulmonary hemorrhage in Bogotá, at age 70. He is buried in the
metropolitan cathedral of that same city. ==References==