Dicastery for the Clergy

Leadership

About Lazarus You Heung-sik

Lazarus You Heung-sik (Korean: 유흥식) was born on 17 November 1951 in Nonsan, South Chungcheong Province, South Korea, and was baptized a Catholic at the age of sixteen. He studied first in Seoul at the Catholic University of Korea and then in Rome, earning a degree in dogmatic theology from the Pontifical Lateran University. He was ordained a priest on 9 December 1979. His early ministry included service as an assistant priest at the diocesan cathedral, director of a retreat house, and director of an education center. Beginning in 1994, he taught as a spiritual director and professor at the Catholic University of Daejeon, becoming its president from 1998 to 2003. Pope John Paul II named him Bishop Coadjutor of the Diocese of Daejeon on 9 July 2003, and he became Bishop of Daejeon on 1 April 2005 upon the retirement of his predecessor. While bishop, he led several Korean Bishops' Conference committees on migrants, youth, and the promotion of martyrs' causes, and served as head of Caritas Korea from 2004 to 2008, during which time he visited Pyongyang four times. In 2014 his diocese hosted Pope Francis. Pope Francis appointed him Prefect of the Dicastery for the Clergy on 11 June 2021, with the personal title of Archbishop—making him the first Korean to head a Roman Curia department. Pope Francis created him a Cardinal-Deacon of Gesù Buon Pastore alla Montagnola on 27 August 2022. He participated as a cardinal elector in the 2025 papal conclave that elected Pope Leo XIV.

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Oversees matters regarding priests and deacons not belonging to institutes of consecrated life or societies of apostolic life, as well as seminaries and houses of formation.

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