Newsroom (12/06/2023, 6:00 AM Gaudium Press) Today, June 12, at noon, local time, the Apostolic Nunciature has made public the name of the successor of Cardinal Carlos Osoro Sierra as Archbishop of Madrid: Bishop José Cobo Cano, up to now one of his Auxiliary Bishops.
Most Rev. José Cobo was born on September 20, 1965 in Sabiote (Jaén). He graduated in Civil Law from the Complutense University of Madrid in 1988. That same year he entered the Conciliar Seminary of La Inmaculada and San Dámaso, where he completed his ecclesiastical studies in Theology. Between 1994 and 1996 he studied Morals at the Redemptorist Institute of Moral Sciences of the Pontifical University of Comillas. He was ordained priest by Cardinal Ángel Suquía Goicoechea on April 23, 1994 in Madrid.
He was vice-consecretary of Hermandades del Trabajo de Madrid (1994-1996), parochial vicar of San Leopoldo (1995-2000), archpriest of San Leopoldo (2000), member of the Presbyteral Council (2000-2012), pastor of San Alfonso María Ligorio (2000-2015) and archpriest of Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Aluche-Campamento (2001-2015), as well as member of the Permanent Commission of the II Diocesan Synod (2002-2005).
Since June 2015, he has held the post of episcopal vicar of the Vicariate II Northeast and, since December of that year, he has been a member of the Presbyteral Council and the Diocesan Pastoral Council.
On December 29, 2017, Pope Francis, appointed him auxiliary Bishop of Madrid, assigning him the titular see of Beatia (Baeza, Biatiensis).
He was consecrated Bishop on February 17, 2018 by Cardinal Carlos Osoro, Cardinal D. Antonio Mª. Rouco Varela and Bishop Enzo Fratini, then Apostolic Nuncio in Spain.
Since March 2020, as a member of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, he has worked on the Episcopal Commission for Social Pastoral and Human Promotion. He was a member of the Episcopal Commission for Social Pastoral since April 2018.
Evangelizing among prisoners was not a new task for Bishop Cobo Cano. As a young university student and later as a priest his apostolate encompassed the hard realities of prisons: “From early on I learned, through dealing with the prisoners, this great challenge that is to discover the depth of each person over and above the labels or conditions in which they have lived. Thanks to them I have learned that, deep down, we are all made of the same clay. This is what Pope Francis tells us when, upon visiting each prison, he ends by launching this question into everyone’s heart: why are they here and not me?”
His episcopal motto is “In misericordia tua, confidere et servire” (In your mercy, trust and serve).
Trusting and serving are the objectives that “have been the basis of my life and my priestly vocation and, therefore, it is my strength, what I can offer right now to the Church and the Christian community.”
With his episcopal coat of arms he wanted to express four offerings and four gestures that have marked his personal and priestly life: the Cross with the five wounds of the Risen Lord; a bell because his mission is to summon the people of God in good times and bad; a basin, as for the disciple, kneeling and washing the feet of others is a place of learning from which the Eucharist and the Church are born. And a broken wall with a star in the background, in allusion to the discovery of the Virgin of the Almudena, and the patron saint of his town, the Virgin of the Star.
On the day of his episcopal ordination, Bp. Cobo Cano said, “Pope Francis, who encouraged us the day he received us in Rome when we went with Card. Carlos [Osoro], leaves us a style for this new pilgrimage. He proposes to us in Evangelii Gaudium to walk with the People of God entrusted to us: that the Bishop should always foster missionary communion. For this, at times he will be in front to show the way and care for the hope of the people, at other times he will simply be in the midst of everyone with his simple and merciful closeness, and at times he will have to walk behind the people to help those who are lagging behind and, above all, because the flock itself has its sense of smell to find new paths.
Compiled by Gustavo Kralj
