Gravely wounded Colombian presidential hopeful improving; could be miracle, cardinal says
Miguel Uribe Turbay, Colombian senator and presidential hopeful; and Cardinal Luis José Rueda, archbishop of Bogotá. / Credit: Luigi Venegas (CC BY-SA 4.0); Daniel Ibáñez/EWTN News Lima Newsroom, Jun 12, 2025 / 16:38 pm (CNA).
Cardinal Luis José Rueda, archbishop of Bogotá and primate of Colombia, said that with the slight improvement of Miguel Uribe Turbay, senator and presidential hopeful who barely survived a June 7 assassination attempt, “we could be looking at a miracle.”
“We could be looking at a miracle, and we’re hoping for one. And I praise and bless the Lord for these signs, and I believe there are many people praying, praying disinterestedly, from different parts of the country,” the cardinal said in an interview with W Radio when asked about Uribe’s fifth medical report.
Uribe, 39, a husband and father, was gravely wounded on June 7 in Bogotá when a 15-year-old boy shot him in the head. He was taken to a hospital run by the Santa Fe Foundation, which provides daily updates on his condition.
On June 8, a large march for peace and to protest the attack against Uribe was held in Bogotá and other cities, with thousands of Colombians participating.
In a June 11 medical report, the Santa Fe Foundation noted that “despite the severity of his clinical condition, there are signs of neurological improvement due to a decrease in cerebral edema”; however, “he remains in critical condition.”
Rueda emphasized that when someone suffers like Uribe’s wife and son, Jesus, the Son of God, draws near to them and encourages them. Thus, when “suffering is combined with hope and love: That is the miracle. A miracle is not magic; a miracle is love and hope that is close at hand.”
The Virgin Mary and suffering
The archbishop of Bogotá also emphasized that “the Blessed Virgin Mary is a woman who had to accompany the mission of Jesus of Nazareth” and accompanied him “at the cross. She accompanies all the children of humanity, those who believe and those who do not.”
“The Virgin accompanies the pain and the hope of all,” the cardinal emphasized.
“Life and death are situations accompanied by the tenderness of a God who never abandons us and who also experienced death so that we might also pass through it,” the archbishop said, referring to the attacks that occurred on June 10 in the Cauca and Valle del Cauca districts, which left at least seven dead.
On June 10, at approximately 9 p.m. local time, Colombian President Gustavo Petro received Rueda at the president’s official residence.
The cardinal emphasized that the meeting featured “a respectful dialogue. It was a dialogue where we were able to discuss the situation in the country, and I went there not to speak in the person of the archbishop of Bogotá but on behalf of all my brother bishops of Colombia and of the president of the bishops’ conference, Archbishop Francisco Javier Múnera Correa.”
Rueda emphasized the importance of “reaching out to the heads of Colombian institutions to convey a message — even if it’s just a millimeter of increased trust — of mutual respect among those at the helm of the country’s institutions so that Colombia can have some hope that we can rebuild, that we can engage in dialogue.”
The cardinal also explained that “the bishops’ conference is committed to creating a space for meeting where the president of the republic and the heads of the country’s various institutional bodies will be present to say: ‘We all close ranks in the name of life and in the name of rejecting all forms of violence in the various parts of our country.’”
“I believe that principles like these, life and the rejection of violence, have no ideology, no slant to them. This is ecumenical; it belongs to everyone, to Catholics and non-Catholics, to those of one political party and another.”
“Here, either we all win or we all lose,” he concluded, “because we are one family, the 50 million Colombians.”
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
