Born on 27 September 1907 in Talca, Chile, to Ricardo Silva Silva and Mercedes Henríquez Encina, he was the sixteenth of 19 children, five of whom died during childhood. His father was a farmer and entrepreneur, from an ancient family of Portuguese origin that had settled in Chile at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
He attended the prestigious Liceo Alemán in Santiago de Chile, then the Law School at the Pontifical Catholic University Chile, where he obtained his Law degree in 1929. Having entered the Salesians in Santiago de Chile on 27 January 1930, he continued his studies at the Pontifical Salesian Athenaeum in Turin, where he obtained his doctorates in Theology and Canon Law.
Ordained a priest on 3 July 1938 in Turin, he was first a professor at the International Salesian Theological School at La Cisterna, Santiago (1938-1943), then the Rector of several Salesian institutes, schools and vocational training centres. His educational activity was always wide-ranging, and in fact he was also founder and president of the Federation of Catholic Schools of Chile in 1945, and founder of the "Rumbos" magazine.
His pastoral attention was extensive: he perceived and cared for the needs of religious (in 1953 he organised the First Consecrated Life Congress), migrants (he was the organiser and first Director of the Chilean Catholic Institute of Migration) and the poor (as national President of Caritas and then as President of Caritas Internationalis).
Elected bishop of Valparaíso on October 24, 1959, he received episcopal ordination on 29 November of the same year, choosing as his motto: Caritas Christi urget nos.
In 1961 he was appointed Archbishop of Santiago de Chile and was created cardinal by Pope John XXIII in the Consistory of 19 March 1962.
As a bishop and as a cardinal he was a staunch defender of human rights, systematically violated in his country after 1973 by the military junta that governed the country, and in the absence of a political opposition silenced, imprisoned or exiled, the Church, under his leadership became the only effective resistance to the regime. He established the Committee for Peace Cooperation in Chile in 1973, followed by the Vicariate of Solidarity, a shelter for victims of human rights violations, who were provided with legal aid and medical assistance during the political and military crisis.
In addition, it is believed that Cardinal Silva Henríquez played an important role in convincing the governments of Chile and Argentina to allow Pope John Paul II to mediate their border dispute and avoid war, in 1978.
For all these initiatives, on 11 December of that same year he received the "Human Rights Award" from the United Nations.
As Archbishop of Santiago he anticipated the spring of the Second Vatican Council of which he became first an active protagonist and then an eloquent witness, courageously proposing its evangelical freshness, the warm tone of conversation with modern human beings, the communication of salvation. Under his guidance, the Chilean Church gradually experienced a new style of pastoral care, in communion, in collegial-based analyses and decisions.
An essential pastor in his traits, he inspired confidence in his collaborators, he showed himself to be an effective father to those who turned to him for help. With him, the ecclesial communities implemented the preferential option for the promotion of the dignity of people, starting with the most needy and discriminated against, especially during the transition from democracy to a practically Marxist government and then to the military regime.
His wide-ranging work – he was also president of Caritas International – put him in contact with Heads of State and politicians of other peoples, other local Churches. With them he thought big. His extensive knowledge of world problems, legal competence, which he put at the service of the universal Church presiding over episcopal and expert commissions, spurred him to hypothesise the United States of Latin America as the cradle and radiant centre of the civilisation of love in the shadow of the redeeming Cross.
He died on 9 April 1999 in the Salesian retirement home in La Florida, on the outskirts of Santiago de Chile, due to an attack of pneumonia, complicated by renal dysfunction, and is buried in the crypt of St James' Cathedral. The Chilean democratic government of the time declared five days of national mourning in his honour.
