In this issue, we present our Catholic of the Year award to a thoroughly deserving recipient: the long-suffering laity. But if we had given it to a Church leader, we can think of few more worthy of receiving it than Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes.
At first, he might seem like an unlikely candidate. The 69-year-old still lives with his mother, seems reluctant to occupy the spotlight and is known for his eccentric appearance.
As the Crux reporter Inés San Martín put it in a recent profile interview, he has “wild tufts of white hair, which, under a red skull cap, resemble more the wig of a clown than the usual careful coif of a member of the Church’s most exclusive club.” He is famous for wearing jeans beneath his cassock – a sign of his closeness to ordinary people, rather than a mark of contempt for liturgical norms.
