Archbishop Emeritus Eusebius Beltran, who served as the Catholic Church’s archbishop in Oklahoma’s largest city for nearly two decades, has died.
Beltran was 91.
The announcement of his death was made by the Most Rev. Paul S. Coakley, who took over the Oklahoma City Archdiocese in early 2011 after Beltran stepped down. Beltran was installed as the archdiocese’s third archbishop in 1993, and submitted his resignation to the pope in 2009 when he turned 75, the retirement age for bishops.
“Archbishop Beltran was indeed a good shepherd,” Coakley wrote.
Funeral arrangements will be announced soon.
From his time in OKC, Coakley said Beltran would be proud of the development of the Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Camp, which serves young people in the region.
Beltran also began the process to have Blessed Stanley Rother declared a saint in 2007, a process that is still ongoing. Rother, an Oklahoma native, was a Catholic priest when he was murdered in Guatemala. So far, the Catholic Church has endowed beatification on Rother.
A native of Pennsylvania, Beltran was ordained as a priest in 1960 by the Archdiocese of Georgia, headquartered then in Decatur, Georgia. His first assignment placed him in the deep south during the Civil Rights Era. In the ’60s, he was among the many Catholic clergy who participated in the civil-rights marches along with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Former Oklahoma City Archbishop Eusebius Beltran dies at 91