Cardinal Juan José Omella Omella, the Archbishop of Barcelona, is a trusted adviser of Pope Francis who currently serves as a member of his Council of Cardinal Advisers, and headed Spain’s bishops’ conference from 2014 to 2017.

Born on April 21, 1946, in Cretas, Aragon, Spain, he completed his studies in philosophy and theology at the seminary of Zaragoza and furthered his education at centers for missionaries in Leuven and Jerusalem.

Ordained as a priest on September 20, 1970, Omella initially worked for the Church in Zaragoza and spent a year as a missionary in Zaire. His ecclesiastical career progressed rapidly, with Pope John Paul II appointing him auxiliary bishop of Zaragoza in 1996. He then served as bishop of Barbastro-Monzón from 1999 to 2004 and as bishop of Calahorra y La Calzada-Logroño from 2004 to 2015.

In 2015, Pope Francis appointed Omella as the Archbishop of Barcelona. His influence in the Church continued to grow, and on June 28, 2017, Pope Francis elevated him to the cardinalate.

Omella has held several significant positions within the Spanish Episcopal Conference. He served as president of the Commission of Social Ministry from 2002 to 2008 and again from 2014 to 2017. Most notably, he was the president of the Episcopal Conference from 2020 to 2024.

In terms of his involvement in Vatican affairs, Omella was appointed a member of the Congregation for Bishops in 2014 and later became a member of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura in 2017. In March 2023, Pope Francis appointed him to the Council of Cardinal Advisors, further cementing his influential position in the Church.

Cardinal Juan José Omella sees the Eucharist as essential in the life of the faithful, and advocates greater physical participation of lay people, both men and women, in the liturgical celebration. He sees positively Pope Francis’ decision to formally institute the lay ministries of lector and acolyte for men and women, considering it a “normalization” of a situation that already occurred in practice.

During COVID-19, the cardinal promoted the adaptation of Eucharistic and liturgical celebrations to guarantee health security, implementing distancing and hygiene measures.

Omella links the Eucharist with social commitment and charity. He has emphasized that the Eucharist must awaken in the faithful the desire to selflessly help others, being like Christ “good bread that feeds the world.”

Cardinal Omella has taken a strong stance against abortion, condemning Spain’s recent reforms to abortion laws. He criticized the government’s decision to relax abortion restrictions, stating on Twitter: “No one bats an eyelid if a baby who has been in the womb fewer than nine months is martyred. But if a baby is born prematurely at five months old, there is an insistence its life saved. Yet breaking an eagle’s egg is forbidden!”

The Spanish cardinal sparked controversy in 2023 when he responded to reports of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church in Spain. He rejected the conclusions of a report on pedophilia in the Spanish Catholic Church, calling the extrapolated figures reported by some of the media “lies” that are “intended to deceive.” He argued that the media’s interpretation of the official report, which suggested hundreds of thousands of victims, was misrepresentative.

Omella also stated, “We will not tire of asking for forgiveness from the victims and working for their healing.” However, his approach was criticized by some victims who felt that proper investigations had not been conducted, particularly in his archdiocese of Barcelona.