Eugênio de Araújo Sales (8 November 1920 – 9 July 2012) was a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, having been elevated by Pope Paul VI on 28 April 1969.

He served as archbishop of São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro for thirty years until his resignation was accepted in 2001, when he had already passed the maximum age for voting in a papal conclave.

Sales' third mission as special papal envoy was performed when he travelled to Braga, Portugal, and there presided, on 8 December 2004 over celebrations commemorating the centennial of the coronation of the image of Our Lady of Sameiro and the sesquicentennial of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.

Although those days of prayer and reflection were not convoked as formal extraordinary consistories, all members of the College of Cardinals (electors and non-electors) were summoned to attend the meetings, together with the prelates that were about to be raised to the cardinalate.

As is the normal practice, by mandate of the Holy See, Sales, now Archbishop emeritus, continued to govern the See of Rio de Janeiro as Apostolic Administrator from the acceptance of his resignation on 25 July 2001 until the installation of his successor on 22 September 2001.

At the death of Pope John Paul II, Sales was the second-longest-serving cardinal in the Church and as such, although at 84 unable to vote in the 2005 Papal conclave, he played an important role in the pre-conclave discussions.

He presided at one of the funeral masses for John Paul II during the Novemdiales (nine days of mourning for the deceased Pope) as senior Cardinal-Priest present in Rome during the 2005 sede vacante.

Also in that capacity, Sales was present in the first and third (non-public) parts of the funeral of Pope John Paul II, and was one of those who signed the rogito (the parchment containing biographical data that was placed inside the papal coffin).

He was thus the last living person to have been raised to the Cardinalate before the entry into force of the modern form of the Mass promulgated by Pope Paul VI with the Constitution Missale Romanum.

He still kept the commitment of writing a weekly article on a topic of faith or morals, which was published in the O Globo newspaper, and as of March 2011 he was still often seen celebrating Mass on Sundays or other holy days in the parish church of Our Lady of Peace in the neighbourhood of Ipanema.

[1] His funeral mass and burial were on Wednesday, 11 July 2012, with Rio de Janeiro's current archbishop, Orani João Tempesta, presiding along with the other prelates of the archdiocese.