Feast day: March 23
St. Turibius of Mogrovejo
A Spanish lawyer made archbishop of Lima, who walked thousands of miles through Peru to defend the native peoples, learn their languages, and bring them the faith.
Turibius of Mogrovejo was born in 1538 into a noble family of León in Spain, became a brilliant professor of law at Salamanca, and was so respected for his integrity that King Philip II appointed him a chief judge — though he was still a layman. Then, astonishingly, the king named him archbishop of Lima, the chief see of Spanish South America.
Ordained and consecrated, he arrived in Peru in 1581 to find a vast, half-evangelized territory marked by the abuses of the colonists against the native peoples. Turibius set himself against those abuses and for the dignity of the Indians, learning their languages and insisting that the Gospel be preached to them in their own tongue.
Three times he crossed his immense diocese on foot or by mule — journeys of years and thousands of miles — to baptize, confirm, and catechize; he is said to have confirmed close to a million people, among them the future saints Rose of Lima and Martin de Porres. He founded the first seminary in the Americas at Lima in 1591.
He died, worn out by his travels, in 1606. Canonized in 1726, St. Turibius is honoured as a model of the missionary bishop and a patron of the Latin American episcopate.
He traveled his vast Andean diocese on foot for years, confirmed and catechized the indigenous in their own tongues, and baptized the future St. Martin de Porres.
Image: MNBAArgentina (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.
Source: newadvent.org/cathen/14781a.htm
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