Fernando Lugo

Fernando Armindo Lugo Méndez (born 30 May 1951) is a Paraguayan politician and laicized Catholic bishop who was President of Paraguay from 2008 to 2012.

His maternal uncle, Epifanio Méndez Fleitas, was a co-conspirator in the 1954 Paraguayan coup d'état that helped bring Alfredo Stroessner to power.

However, he later fell out of favor with Stroessner and ultimately became a dissident after leaving the country.

Fernando's father was imprisoned twenty times, and some of his elder siblings were sent into so-called exile.

His father wanted Lugo to become a lawyer, but at 18 Lugo entered a normal school, and began teaching in a rural community.

He was well accepted by the community, which was very religious, but they had no priest.

He said later that he was touched by that experience, and so discovered his vocation to the Roman Catholic priesthood.

At age 19 he entered a seminary operated by the Society of the Divine Word.

He was ordained a priest for the society on 15 August 1977.

He was sent to Ecuador, where he served as a missionary for five years.

In Ecuador he learned about liberation theology and taught classes at the Centro Biblio Verbo Divino in Quito.

Lugo returned to Paraguay in 1982, and after a year, was sent to Rome for further academic studies.

Lugo came back to Paraguay in 1987, two years before the Stroessner dictatorship's fall.

Previously, he was a Roman Catholic priest and bishop, serving as Bishop of the Diocese of San Pedro from 1994 to 2005.

Lugo was ordained a bishop on 17 April 1994, and received charge of the nation's poorest diocese, in the San Pedro diocese.

Lugo resigned as ordinary of the Diocese of San Pedro on 11 January 2005.

He had requested laicization to run for office.

However, the Holy See refused the request on the grounds that bishops could not undergo laicization, and also denied him the requested canonical permission to run for civil elected office.

During 2006, opinion polls published by Diario ABC Color newspaper showed him as a possible choice for the opposition's presidential candidacy.

Known as "the bishop of the poor", Lugo was seen in subsequent months as the most serious threat to the dominance of the Colorado Party on Paraguayan politics.

Although he said he found the presidency of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela interesting, he made a point to distance himself from leftist leaders in Latin America, focusing more on social inequality in Paraguay.

On 23 February 2007, a Prensa Latina article noted that the Paraguayan Interior Ministry offered Lugo protection because of the death threats he received during the course of his political activities.

According to a poll in February 2007, he was the leading contender in the April 2008 presidential election, with more than 37% of the voters' intention.

On 29 October 2007, he registered as member of the small Christian Democratic Party of Paraguay (CDP), which allowed him to file as a candidate.

The CDP became the core of the Patriotic Alliance for Change, a coalition of more than a dozen opposition parties and social movements which backed Lugo for President.

Federico Franco of the Authentic Radical Liberal Party, Paraguay's largest opposition party, was the candidate for Vice President.

The legality of Lugo's candidacy was questioned, because Article 235 of the Constitution forbids clerics of any religious denomination to hold elective office, and Pope Benedict XVI had rejected Lugo's resignation from the priesthood.

However, on 16 November 2007, President Nicanor Duarte Frutos (also Chairman of the Colorado Party) announced that the Party would not object to Lugo's candidacy, In July 2008, the Pope laicized Lugo, which made the question moot.

He was elected as president in 2008, an election that ended 61 years of rule by the Colorado Party.

However, after Lugo won the presidential election, the Church granted his laicization on 30 June 2008.

"Without doubt it is possible to resurrect a country like Paraguay. We are people of hope, of faith, and I won't be the one killing that hope of the people. I do believe we will resurrect this country, a country deeply drowned in misery, poverty and discrimination. Because I do believe Paraguay could be different. I do not lack faith in this flock. Where there is a scream coming from the poor people, where there is sweat, where people are shoeless, we will be there. Because in such people there is a resurrection; if that exists there, then there is resurrection for Paraguay."

Lugo jumped to the national arena by backing peasant claims for better land distribution.

On 20 April 2008, Lugo won the election by a margin of 10%, gaining a 42.3% vote share.

The Colorado Party candidate, Blanca Ovelar, acknowledged that Lugo had an unassailable lead and conceded the race that same night at about 9 pm local time.

Two hours later, President Duarte acknowledged that the Colorados had lost an election for the first time in 61 years.

In 2012, he was removed from office through an impeachment process that neighboring countries deemed a coup d'état.

He was elected to the Senate of Paraguay in the 2013 and 2018 general elections but failed to win reelection in the 2023 Paraguayan general election.

He received his basic education at a religious school in Encarnación, and sold snacks on the streets.

His family was not particularly religious; by his own account, he never saw his father set foot in a church.

However, they were active in Colorado Party politics.