Felipe de Jesús Estévez

Felipe de Jesús Estévez (born February 5, 1946) is a Cuban-born American Catholic prelate who served as bishop of St. Augustine in Florida from 2011 to 2022. Estévez previously served as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Miami in Florida from 2003 to 2011.

Biography

Early life Felipe Estévez was born in Pedro Betancourt, Matanzas, Cuba on February 6, 1946. He fled to the United States as a young man under Operation Peter Pan, a program to bring Cuban children to the United States. He is the second of three children (two boys and a girl) of Adriano and Estrella Estevez. Estévez studied at Montreal University in Montreal, Quebec, and received a Licentiate of Theology in 1970.

Priesthood Estévez was ordained a priest by Bishop Leo Pursley for the Diocese of Matanzas in Cuba on May 30, 1970, in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Estévez was sent to Honduras, serving as associate pastor of Guascoran Parish in Guascoran, Honduras for one year. He became a faculty member in Honduras of the St. Joseph Seminary for one year and Our Lady of Suyapa Seminary for two years. On January 7, 2004, he was consecrated at the Cathedral of St. Mary in Miami by Archbishop John Favalora. His co-consecrators were Archbishop Pedro Estiu and Bishop Thomas Olmsted. The service was attended by Protestant and Orthodox leaders, clergy, and lay people. He attended the installation of Bishop Robert Schaefer of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America near Tampa, Florida. He collaborated with local Eastern Orthodox Christian leaders in support of the meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Bartholomew in Jerusalem on May 25, 2014.

On October 15, 2019, Estévez announced that the Shrine of Our Lady of La Leche, located in the Nombre de Dios mission in St. Augustine, had been designated by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops as a national shrine.

Retirement On May 24, 2022, Pope Francis accepted Estévez's resignation as bishop of the Diocese of St. Augustine.

Viewpoints Abortion On October 11, 2020, just before the 2020 US presidential election, Estévez asked Catholic voters to consider the church's opposition to abortion rights for women when selecting candidates. He called abortion the "preeminent human rights issue" of our time.

Capital punishment On May 28, 2020, Estévez published a pastoral letter in which he condemned the use of capital punishment in Florida. He stated:We don't want anyone in society to be in danger because of these criminals, but we don't think that death is the answer. Killing them because they have killed would perpetuate the cycle of violence."