Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo was a central figure after the Medellín Conference. As a priest in Bogotá in 1968, he did not attend the conference. But he was elected in 1972 as general secretary of CELAM, and then its president in 1979 (at the Puebla conference). He represented a more conservative position, becoming a favourite of Pope John Paul II and the "principal scourge of liberation theology." López's faction became predominant in CELAM after the 1972 Sucre conference, and in the Roman Curia after the 1979 CELAM conference in Puebla.