Joaquín Mariano Sucunza

Joaquín Mariano Sucunza (15 February 1946) is an Argentine prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He has been auxiliary bishop of Buenos Aires since 2000.

Life Born in Pamplona, Spain, to a family of shepherds based in Lecumberri in the Navarra region on 15 February 1946, Sucunza received his episcopal consecration on the following 21 October from Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires (later Pope Francis), with Mario José Serra, Auxiliary Bishop of Buenos Aires, and Guillermo Leaden, Auxiliary Bishop Emeritus, serving as co-consecrators.

Bergoglio gave him increasing responsibility, naming him moderator of the curia on 12 December 2000, vicar general on 27 April 2002, and episcopal vicar for economic affairs on 3 June 2008. and the administrators of the archdiocese chose him to head the Archdiocese until Bergoglio named a successor. Sucunza reported that Pope Francis called him the day after his election and they spoke for 45 minutes. He quoted Francis as saying of the papal election: "When I saw that the number was already irreversible as the votes were counted, I imagined I was dying... a very rare thing, inside of me. When that brief moment passed, I felt different. I do not know what happened to me, but I felt different."