Omella was born in the village of Cretas in the province of Teruel, Aragon, where both Castillian and Catalan are spoken. One of his sisters still lives there, while the other died at a young age. The village priest prepared him to enter the seminary of Zaragoza. He studied at education centres for missionaries in Leuven and Jerusalem as well. On 20 September 1970 he was ordained a priest. He then worked for the church in Zaragoza and in Zaire. Pope John Paul II appointed him auxiliary bishop of Zaragoza on 15 July 1996 and he was consecrated a bishop on 22 September by Elías Yanes Alvarez, Archbishop of Zaragoza. John Paul II named him bishop of Barbastro-Monzón in 1999. He held the posts of Apostolic Administrator of Huesca and of Jaca from 2001 to 2003. In 2004 he was named bishop of Calahorra and La Calzada-Logroño. He has been a member of the Commission of Social Ministry of the Spanish Episcopal Conference since 1996 and president of that commission from 2002 to 2008. He is serving another term as president from 2014 to 2017. On 6 November 2014, Pope Francis appointed him a member of the Congregation for Bishops. According to El Periodico, Omella engineered the early retirement of Manuel Ureña Pastor as Archbishop of Zaragoza in November 2014. On 6 November 2015, Pope Francis appointed Omella Archbishop of Barcelona. He was installed there on 26 December. On 21 May 2017, Pope Francis announced plans to make him a cardinal at a consistory scheduled for 28 June 2017. El Diario said the appointment made clear that Pope Francis's representatives in Spain were not the conservatives recently elected to head the Spanish Episcopal Conference, but Omella and Carlos Osoro, the Archbishop of Madrid whom Francis made a cardinal in 2016. It noted that Omella's appointment to the Congregation for Bishops positioned him to influence the future of church leadership in Spain. It cited as well his pastoral letters on social issues and ties to, which focuses on the problems of developing nations. The consistory was held on 28 June as scheduled. Following the Catalan independence referendum in 2017 the Catalan government suggested that Omella and the Abbot of Montserrat should act as mediators between the region and Spanish authorities. Francis made him a member of the Congregation for Bishops and of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura on 23 December 2017. Omella is the co-author, with Miguel Pothoes Mombiela and José María Navarro, of La aurora de Calanda, una antigua institución, published in 1991.
