former Roman Catholic bishop who became president of Paraguay (2008– ). His inauguration ended the conservative Colorado Party's 62-year hold on power.

Lugo was the nephew of Epifanio Méndez Fleitas, a Colorado Party leader who was forced into exile in 1956, during Gen. Alfredo Stroessner (Stroessner, Alfredo)'s 35-year dictatorship (1954–89). After briefly working as a primary-school teacher, in 1970 Lugo began a novitiate with the Divine Word Missionaries. In 1977 he earned a degree in religious studies from the Catholic University in Asunción and was ordained a priest. He worked the following five years in Ecuador's Andean region under the bishop of Riobamba, Leonidas Proaño, a leading South American liberation theologist. After a brief return to Paraguay, Lugo was sent to Rome in 1983 for further studies. He returned to Paraguay in 1987, and in 1992 he was appointed the provincial superior, or head, of the Divine Word community there. He was consecrated bishop of San Pedro in 1994.

Lugo rose to prominence in Paraguay as the “bishop of the poor,” leading landless peasants in his economically disadvantaged rural diocese of San Pedro Apóstol de Ycuamandiyú in a campaign for agrarian reform against wealthy landowners backed by the Colorado Party. After 11 years Lugo resigned his bishopric in January 2005 to step more directly into politics. In Paraguay, a country infamous for corruption and in which one-third of the population lives in poverty, his reputation for honesty and his work for the poor made the priest, who invariably campaigned in sandals and open-necked shirts, enormously popular. Unions, agrarian groups, and others opposing Colorado Party rule united behind him, as did the centre-left opposition coalition Patriotic Alliance for Change (Alianza Patriótica para el Cambio; APC), which he had helped form. After Lugo defied a December 2006 canonical admonition against becoming a presidential candidate, the Vatican suspended him a divinis in January 2007, barring him from practicing as a priest.

Lugo defeated Blanca Ovelar of the Colorado Party in the country's 2008 elections and was inaugurated in August, promising to push for land redistribution, political and economic transparency, and new social programs to help the poor. Venezuelan Pres. Hugo Chávez (Chávez, Hugo), a close ally, joined Lugo at the ceremony. Lugo has called for renegotiating Paraguay's share of revenues from Brazil for power from the huge Itaipú (Itaipú Dam) hydroelectric dam and for reforming the country's military.