Rodolfo Quezada Toruño

Rodolfo Ignacio Quezada Toruño (8 March 1932 – 4 June 2012) was a Guatemalan Catholic prelate who served as Archbishop of Santiago de Guatemala from 2003 to 2010. He previously served as Bishop of Zacapa y Santo Cristo de Esquipulas from 1980 to 2001. He was elevated to the cardinalate in 2003.

Biography The oldest of three children, Quezada was born in Guatemala City to René Quezada Alejos and Clemencia Toruño Lizarralde. After studying philosophy at the Seminary of San José in El Salvador, he earned a Licentiate in Theology from the University of Innsbruck in Austria in 1959 and a Doctorate in Canon Law from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in 1962. Quezada was ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop Mariano Rossell y Arellano on 21 September 1956. He served as parochial vicar of El Sagrario, rector of Beatas di Belén, university chaplain as well as vice-chancellor of the Archdiocese of Guatemala City. He was the first rector of the National Major Seminary of the Assumption in Guatemala, and named Chaplain of His Holiness on 18 August 1968. He also taught canon law at the Salesian Theological Institute and Rafael Landívar University, and ethics at the University of San Carlos of Guatemala. He led two organizations that played important roles in forming a peace agreement: the National Reconciliation Commission, which he headed from 1987 to 1993, and the Assembly of the Civil Society, which he headed from 1994 to 1996.