St. Turibius of Mogrovejo

A Spanish lay lawyer named — astonishingly — archbishop of Lima at forty-two, in a Church the Spanish empire had treated as a colonial appendage. Ordained quickly, he sailed to Peru and spent twenty-six years walking and riding the immense diocese, baptizing some 500,000 indigenous Peruvians and confirming half a million more. He convoked three provincial councils that shaped the Latin American Church.

Born in Mayorga de Campos in the kingdom of León, Turibius studied law at Salamanca and was appointed head of the Inquisition tribunal at Granada — an honor for a layman that revealed his exceptional reputation for integrity. When Philip II nominated him for Lima, Turibius protested that canon law forbade the appointment of laymen to bishoprics. The pope overruled his objections, and within months he was ordained, consecrated, and on a ship bound for the New World.

He learned Quechua and several other indigenous languages to preach without interpreters, defended the native peoples against the cruelties of the colonists, and established the first seminary in the Americas. Among those he confirmed was a young boy named Rose, the future St. Rose of Lima. He died in 1606 at Saña, in a remote corner of his diocese, still making the pastoral rounds. He is the patron saint of Latin American bishops and of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.