Roman Catholic Cardinal. A worldwide known outspoken defender of human rights, Raúl Silva Henríquez SDB., was born in Talca, the sixteenth of nineteen children born to a farmer and industrialist from a family of Portuguese origins that had established itself in Chile at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Frequenting the Catholic University of Chile, earning a doctorate in law, he joined the Salesians of Don Bosco on January 28, 1930 at their house in Santiago de Chile. Undergoing further studies at the Salesian philosophate of Santiago de Chile and later at the Pontifical Salesian Athenaeum in Turin, Italy, he went on to earn two further doctorates, one in theology and the other in canon law. Ordained priest on July 3, 1938 in Turin, back in Chile he was named faculty member of the International Salesian Theological School of Santiago-Cisterna and shortly afterward, director of the Salesian school Manuel Arriaráan Barros of La Cisterna and of the Patrocinio de San José school of Santiago de Chile. Founder and president of the Federation of Catholic Schools and of the journal "Rumbos" published in Santiago de Chile, Silva served furthermore as director of the International Salesian Theological School of Santiago-Cisterna, of the Gratitud Nacional Professional School and of the San Juan Bosco Lyceum. Organizing the First Congress of Consecrated Life in 1953, he was named president of the Chilean Delegation to the Congress of Consecrated Life held Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1956. Organizer and first director of the Catholic Chilean Institute of Migration, he went on to the appointed national president of Cáritas Chile and vice-president of the Cáritas International. Pope John XXIII appointed him bishop of the diocese of Valparaíso on October 24, 1959, receiving his episcopal consecration on the following November 29 inside the cathedral of his see. Following the demise of Cardinal José María Caro Rodríguez, he was named his successor and thus promoted to the metropolitan see of Santiago de Chile on May 14, 1961. Pope John XXIII created him cardinal Priest in the consistory of March 19 of the following year with the title of San Bernardo alle Terme, appointing him president of Cáritas International of Rome the next October. Receiving the Human Rights Prize from the Latin American Jewish Congress in 1971, he established the Committee of Cooperation for Peace in Chile in 1973, followed by the Vicariate of Solidarity to defend and promote human rights in Chile during the politico-military crisis during the rule of Augusto Pinochet. In recognition to his aid for victims of repression, during which he became the target of attacks by the military, having his parents' grave desecrated and gunmen shooting at his house, he received the Human Rights Prize from the United Nations on December 11, 1978 and the Foundation Bruno Kreisky Prize for his defense of human rights in Vienna, Austria on October 19, 1979. Founding the Blas Cañas University, he retired from the pastoral government of his see on May 3, 1983. Visited by hundreds of people over his last days, including politicians from the left and the right, military commanders and many ordinary Chileans, Cardinal Silva died on April 9, 1999, at the Felipe Rinaldi Salesian retirement house in the zone of La Florida, on the outskirts of Santiago, after failing to recover from a bout of pneumonia complicated by a kidney disorder. His body was exposed in the church of San Juan Bosco of Santiago whilst Chile declared five days of national mourning after his death. The Cardinal lies buried in the crypt of the metropolitan cathedral of Santiago. Featured on the 500 pesos coin of the country, he is considered as a possible candidate for beatification.