Roman Catholic Cardinal. A native of Zaldivia, Ángel Suquía Goicoechea was one of thirteen children born to José Ignacio Suquía and Justa Goicoechea. Receiving his first education under the Brothers of Christian Schools of Saint John Baptist De La Salle, he entered the Minor Seminary of Saturrarán, Motrico, and successively the Major Seminary of Vitoria. With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, he was destined to the fort of Guadalupe as soldiers' instructor. In 1939, he traveled to the Benedictine monastery of Maria Laach in Germany to study liturgy but when the Second World War started that same year he quickly returned to Spain. After the war, he entered the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome from where he earned a doctorate in theology. Ordained priest on July 7, 1940 in the chapel of the seminary of Vitoria, he served as counselor to young men members of the Catholic Action, director of houses of spiritual exercises in Madrid and Bilbao and faculty member of the named seminary of Vitoria of which he was eventually named rector. He also taught at the school of social assistants and the Center of Superior Religious Studies. Counselor of the Catholic National Association of Propagandists and director of the diocesan secretariat for spiritual development of the city of Vitoria, he was named canon penitentiary of the cathedral chapter of Vitoria and vice-president of the Institute of Spirituality of the Pontifical University of Salamanca. Chaplain of the Brothers of Christian Schools in Cuba and director of the house of spiritual exercises of Santa María del Rosario in the province of Havana, on May 17, 1966 he was elected bishop of the diocese of Almería, Spain, receiving his episcopal consecration on the following July 16 from Msgr. Antonio Riberi. Transferred to the see of Málaga on November 28, 1969, he was promoted to the metropolitan see of Santiago de Compostela on April 13, 1973 following the demise of Fernando Cardinal Quiroga y Palacios. Named archbishop of Madrid on April 12, 1983 after the retirement of Cardinal Vicente Enrique y Tarancón, Pope John Paul II created him cardinal priest in the consistory of May 25, 1985 with the title of Gran Madre di Dio. President of the Spanish Episcopal Conference between 1987 and 1993, when his archdiocese was elevated to a metropolitan see on July 23, 1991, he became its first metropolitan archbishop of Madrid. Resigning the pastoral government of his see on July 28, 1994, Cardinal Suquía Goicoechea was a man of great intellectual capacity, known for his polite and respectful manners. He died at the age of 89 on Thursday, July 13 2006 at 1.45 am., after a long illness at his home in San Sebastián. His corpse, previously embalmed was placed in a casket of zinc with a crystal cover and in another of wood and was transferred to Madrid. Received by Cardinal Antonio María Rouco Varelato at the crypt of the cathedral of the Almudena, where he was laid in state enabling people to pay homage, the corpse remained exposed in the crypt till Saturday, July 15 when at 11.30 am., a procession transferred his remains to the cathedral, where the solemn mass was celebrated at noon. Burial took place in a sarcophagus in the chapel of San Isidoro in the cathedral of Santa Maria la Real de la Almudena completed during his episcopate, becoming thus, the first ordinary of Madrid to be buried there.