HE MIGHT now be president-elect of Paraguay but 56-year- old Fernando Lugo still comes across far more as a priest than a politician, writes Tom Hennigan.
Though he resigned from the priesthood in order to enter politics, most Paraguayans still refer to him as Monseñor Lugo and he himself never loses an opportunity to say that he still feels very much part of the Catholic Church. His stump speeches sound like sermons and while he might have ditched the dog collar, sandals and black slacks are still very much part of his uniform. His sister will fill the role of first lady.
But while he might not be an obvious politician himself, he does come from a traditional political family.
There is an irony in Fernando Lugo being the man who finally toppled Paraguay's Colorado party. His own family background is impeccably Colorado. His uncle was a leading party figure in the 1950s and played a role in bringing the Colorado general Alfredo Stroessner to power.
The party bosses thought they could make the general do the party's bidding but it ended up doing his for 35 years.
The wily Stroessner did not want any kingmakers around him and so Lugo's uncle was soon forced into exile and several of his cousins were tortured for the participation in dissident Colorado movements during the dictatorship.
Lugo opted for a career in the church and was ordained a priest in the Divine Word Missionaries in 1977. He was first a missionary in Ecuador, studied in Rome and remembers fondly a month attending a conference in Maynooth in the early 1980s.
In 1994 he was made bishop of San Pedro in Paraguay, one of the country's poorest regions. There his interest in liberation theology and its "preference for the poor" led him to get involved in the local struggle of landless peasants for land of their own.
In 2005 he resigned his position as bishop and a few months later was invited to attend a rally in Asunción to protest at the blatant violation of the constitution by the Colorado president in his bid to hold on to power beyond his mandate.
That night Lugo electrified the crowd and almost immediately was talked about as a possible unifying figure for the opposition. By December 2006 he resigned from holy orders and launched the campaign that ended in triumph on Sunday night.