Saint Turibius of Mogrovejo

Toribio Alfonso de Mogrovejo was born at Mayorga, in Leon, Spain, in 1538; Franciscan Media gives the day as November 16. ¹² The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia says he came of a noble family and was highly educated, and both sources agree that he became professor of law at the University of Salamanca. ¹²

His reputation there carried him into the Inquisition. Here the sources differ. Edward Ayme, writing for the encyclopedia in 1912, says Philip II made him Grand Inquisitor of Spain; Franciscan Media says he became chief judge of the Inquisition at Granada. ¹² Franciscan Media adds, drily, that "he succeeded too well." ²

When the archdiocese of Lima needed a new head, Turibius was the man chosen, though he was a layman. ¹² According to Franciscan Media he did not go quietly: he cited every canon that forbade giving church offices to laymen, and was overruled. ² Ayme dates his ordination to 1578 and his consecration as bishop to two years later. ¹ He landed at Paita, in Peru, some 600 miles from Lima, on May 24, 1581, and made his way to the city on foot, baptizing and teaching as he went. ¹

Franciscan Media says he found "colonialism at its worst" in Peru: Spanish conquerors oppressing the native population, and flagrant abuses among the clergy, which he took on first. ² Then he set out to see his people. Ayme says he crossed the whole diocese three times, generally on foot, often alone, through deserts, floods, tropical heat and fever, baptizing and confirming nearly half a million people. ¹ Pope Francis, speaking to the bishops of Peru in the archbishop's palace at Lima in 2018, quoted the saint's secretary on the state of the roads: they were meant "more for goats than for people." ³

Franciscan Media describes how he traveled: learning the language, staying two or three days in each place, often without a bed or food. ² He confessed to his chaplain every morning and said Mass with intense fervor. ² Ayme records the saying he returned to most often: "Time is not our own, and we must give a strict account of it." ¹

How long all this took depends on which source you read. Franciscan Media says he served in Peru for 26 years. ² Pope Francis, quoting his own earlier homily, says that "of the twenty-two years - and some - of his episcopate, eighteen were spent outside of Lima." ³ Francis also called him a "street" bishop, with shoes worn out by walking. ³

He was a lawyer, and he governed like one. Ayme counts thirteen diocesan synods and three provincial councils. ¹ The best known is the Third Provincial Council of Lima of 1582-83, which Benedict XVI says "left a valuable legacy of pastoral teaching and legislation." ⁴ Its catechism, known as the Catechism of Saint Turibius, served for centuries, in Benedict's words, as "an extraordinarily effective means of providing a sound instruction in the faith" to millions of people. ⁴ Pope Francis notes that the council had catechisms compiled and translated into Quechua and Aymara, and that Turibius pressed his clergy to learn the languages of their people so they could administer the sacraments in words those people understood. ³

Ayme credits him with founding the first seminary in the Americas, at Lima, in 1591. ¹ Benedict XVI calls it the Conciliar Seminary of Lima and says it "is still active today." ⁴ Francis adds that he defended the ordination of mestizos, which was a disputed question at the time, insisting that if priests were to stand apart in any way it should be by their holiness and not their race. ³ Pope Leo XIV, who served as a bishop in Peru himself, writes that Turibius provided for the formation of his priests, was demanding about whom he admitted to orders, and visited them. ⁵

Francis tells a small story about those visits. One Christmas Eve his sister gave him a shirt to wear for the feast; that same day he visited a priest, saw how the man was living, took the shirt off and gave it to him. ³ He reminded his priests, Francis says, that they were pastors and not shopkeepers, and that they were to care for and defend the Indigenous people as their own children. ³

His people were very poor, Franciscan Media says, and proud: they dreaded taking charity in public. He solved that by helping them anonymously. ² Ayme adds that he built roads, schoolhouses, chapels, hospitals and convents. ¹

He also confronted those who abused them. In 1585, Francis recounts, Turibius excommunicated the corregidor, or royal magistrate, of Cajatambo, setting himself against what Francis calls "a whole system of corruption" that earned him the enmity of many, the viceroy among them. ³ For Francis, the episode shows a pastor who knew that "spiritual good can never be separated from just material good." ³

From 1590, Franciscan Media notes, he had the help of another great missionary, Francis Solanus, now also a saint. ²

Among the hundreds of thousands he confirmed, both sources single out Rose of Lima. ¹² Ayme also lists Francis Solanus, "Blessed Martin of Porres" and "Blessed Masias." ¹ Franciscan Media is more cautious about Martin, saying only that Turibius "possibly" confirmed him. ² It also calls Turibius, together with Rose, the first known saint of the New World. ²

Ayme writes that years beforehand he foretold the day and hour of his death. ¹ On his last visitation he caught a fever at Pacasmayo, kept working, and reached Sana close to death; he dragged himself to the sanctuary to receive Viaticum and died soon after, on March 23, 1606. ¹ Francis describes the scene: he died in a hut among his people, while a native musician played a song on the chirimia so that his shepherd's soul would be at peace. ³

Ayme records that Pope Innocent XI beatified him and that Pope Benedict XIII canonized him in 1726. ¹ Three hundred years later, in September 2026, Pope Leo XIV marked that centenary with a letter to the bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean, calling him "the Apostle of the Andes." ⁵

Saint Turibius is the patron of the Latin American episcopate. Pope Francis called him that in Lima in 2018, and Pope Leo XIV calls him the "patron saint of the Bishops of Latin America." ³⁵ Neither text says when, or by whom, the title was first given.

Francis also recalled that Saint John Paul II, on his first visit to Peru, called Turibius a "builder of ecclesial unity." ³ And he pointed to a painting in the Vatican Museums that shows the archbishop crossing a great river whose waters part before him like the Red Sea, with native people waiting on the far bank and a crowd of the faithful following behind, which is why he is often portrayed as "a new Moses." ³

His feast is March 23, the day of his death in 1606. Franciscan Media and Vatican News's Saint of the Day both list him on that date, and Benedict XVI dated his 2006 message for the fourth centenary of the death "23 March, Feast of St Turibius of Mogrovejo." ²⁴⁶

Older calendars kept him on a different day. The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia, published in 1912, states that "his feast is celebrated on 27 April." ¹ Both dates are given here.

He did not ask for the work. Franciscan Media says he argued against his own appointment from canon law and lost, and then went to Peru anyway. ² Pope Francis describes him leaving the security of the familiar to enter "a completely new universe, unknown and filled with challenges." ³ Most of what followed was walking: three times across a diocese that ran from Panama toward Chile, on roads his secretary thought fit for goats. ¹³

The record of his work is mostly unglamorous. Synods, a council, a catechism, a seminary, the patient insistence that priests learn Quechua and Aymara so that people could understand what was said to them at the sacraments. ¹³⁴ Benedict XVI connects the catechism to the faith of millions over centuries. ⁴

It also cost him. Excommunicating the corregidor of Cajatambo turned powerful men against him, the viceroy among them. ³ Francis read that episode as a lesson that charity must go with justice, and that a pastor has to name the wrongs done to the people in his care. ³ The sources do not say whether the abuses stopped.

Then there is the shirt his sister gave him for Christmas, which he gave away the same day to a priest worse off than he was. ³ And the help he gave the poor without letting them know where it came from, because they were ashamed to take it openly. ² He died far from his cathedral, in a hut, with a native musician playing beside him. ¹³