On 5 November 1985,
Pope John Paul II appointed Rivera Bishop of
Tehuacán. Archbishop Antonio López Aviña
consecrated him bishop on 21 December with Archbishops
Adolfo Suárez Rivera and
Rosendo Huesca Pacheco as
co-consecrators. He headed the
Mexican Episcopal Conference's Commission for the Family from 1989 to 1995 and the Family Section of the
Latin American Episcopal Conference from 1993 to 1995. Rivera was appointed
archbishop of Mexico City on 13 June 1995. John Paul II made him
cardinal priest of
S. Francesco d'Assisi a Ripa Grande in the
consistory of 21 February 1998. In 2001, when
Legion of Christ founder
Marcial Maciel Degollado faced sexual abuse allegations, Rivera referred to the charges as "a plot." In 2002, Rivera criticized the US media for its coverage of clergy sexual abuse. He called it "an orchestrated plan for striking at the prestige of the Church." He compared it to "what happened in the past century with the persecutions in Mexico, in Spain, in Nazi Germany and in communist countries." Rivera was one of the
cardinal electors who participated in the
2005 papal conclave that elected
Pope Benedict XVI. He was mentioned as a possible choice for pope at the time, as he had been years earlier. Within the Latin American Episcopal Conference, Rivera served as President of the Episcopal Committee of Culture from 2004 to 2006. He is also a member of the
Pontifical Council for the Family, the
Congregation for the Clergy, and the
Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. He was made a member of the
Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life in 2014. In 1996, he forced the resignation of the abbot of the basilica of
Our Lady of Guadalupe after he had questioned the historical truth of Mary's appearance to
Juan Diego. He denounced the legalization of same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples in 2009 and 2010. He said: "Our children and youth run the grave risk of seeing these types of unions as normal and they can falsely understand that sexual differences are simply a personality type.... Homosexual acts, in effect, close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not come from a true affective and sexual complementarity." In 2011, as the
Supreme Court of Mexico prepared to deliberate on a ruling proposed by Justice
Fernando Franco that would overturn anti-abortion constitutional amendments enacted in numerous Mexican states. Rivera Carrera said that "abortion is never a solution for anything." On 25 September he said: "The Church always reaches out to pregnant women who are being pressured at work, by family members or friends to remind each one of them of the great value of motherhood." He noted that the Mexican bishops emphasized that the "taking of human life through the various abortifacient techniques must not be tolerated, and the taking of the life a human being, even in its initial phases, is not licit." He was one of the
cardinal electors who participated in the
2013 papal conclave that elected
Pope Francis. On 13 February 2016, Francis addressed the bishops of Mexico and appeared to castigate them: "Do not lose time or energy in secondary things, in gossip or intrigue, in conceited schemes of careerism, in empty plans for superiority, in unproductive groups that seek benefits or common interests. Do not allow yourselves to be dragged into gossip and slander." In March, an editorial in the newspaper of the Mexico City Archdiocese defended the bishops and said that the pope had received "bad advice". Observers identified Rivera as both a target of the pope's speech and the source of the editorial response.
Sexual abuse case Beginning in 1989, Los Angeles prosecutors pursued a Mexican priest on charges of sexual abuse while he was stationed in the US for more than a decade. A lawsuit filed there charged that as Bishop of Tehuacán and Los Angeles Cardinal,
Roger Mahony had shielded a priest abuser. Rivera said that when he approved the priest's transfer to Los Angeles, he had heard "accusations of homosexuality, but not of pedophilia." Rivera asked the Vatican to
laicize the priest in 2007.
COVID-19 Rivera was admitted to the hospital on January 12, 2021, suffering from
COVID-19. His former spokesperson, Hugo Valdemar Romero, said that Rivera was in intensive care and that the archdiocese had refused to pay his expenses. Rivera received the
Anointing of the Sick on January 19. Archbishop Carlos Aguiar Retes said that the Archdiocese would pay for Rivera's and other clerics' care in a public hospital "because of the economic situation experienced by the Church throughout the country and in communion and solidarity with what thousands of Mexicans have lived during this pandemic", but Rivera had chosen to leave a public hospital for Hospital Ángeles Mocel, a private hospital. The Archdiocese of Mexico announced in early March that Rivera had left the hospital. ==References==