Mogrovejo, Toribio Alfonso de (1538–1606)

Toribio Alfonso de Mogrovejo (b. 16 November 1538; d. 23 March 1606), also known as Santo Toribio, second archbishop of Lima. Born in Mayorga, in the province of León, Spain, he studied law at the universities of Valladolid and Salamanca. In 1574 he was named president of the Tribunal of the Inquisition in Granada. Even though he was a layman, he was named archbishop of Lima in 1578, where, after his ordination as priest and bishop, he arrived in 1581. He convoked the third of the Lima church councils (1582–1583). The council, which brought together bishops from all over South America, as well as the leading theologians of colonial Peru, aimed to systematize the evangelization process and to lay down norms for Christianizing the Indians more effectively.

Toribio considered himself primarily a missionary bishop called to reach the Indians, and secondarily a pastor for the Spanish population. He spent seventeen of his twenty-five years as archbishop outside of Lima, visiting his vast archdiocese. The longest of his four trips, 1584–1590, took him through the Callejón de Huaylas in the north central Andes. He preached to the Indians, baptized, confirmed, and married them. He wrote to the king criticizing local Spanish officials who abused the Indians. In 1584 he founded the seminary in Lima that bears his name. He died in the villa of Saña. In 1726 he was canonized.

See alsoCatholic Church: The Colonial Period .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Enrique Bartra, Tercer concilio limense, 1582–1583 (1982).

Enrique Dussel, El episcopado latinoamericano y la liberación de los pobres, 1504–1620 (1979).

Mary McGlone, "The King's Surprise: The Mission Methodology of Toribio de Mogrovejo," in The Americas 50 (July 1993): 65-83.

Vicente Rodríguez Valencia, Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo: Organizador y apóstol de Sur-América, 2 vols. (1957).

Additional Bibliography

Benito Rodríguez, José Antonio, editor. Libro de visitas de Santo Toribio Mogrovejo, 1593–1605. Lima, Peru: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Fondo Editorial 2006.

Vargas Alzamora, Augusto. Santo Toribio y la nueva evangelización. Lima, Peru: Conferencia Episcopal Peruana: Centro de Investigaciones Teológicas de la Facultad de Teología Pontificia y Civil de Lima, 1991.

                                        Jeffrey Klaiber