Turibius arrived in Paita in 1581, the Spanish capital of the northwestern Peruvian coast until it was destroyed by English pirates seven years later. Peru was and still can be a dangerous place to be.
Turibius had no ambition to be a priest. He came from a noble and very well educated family in Valladolid in the province of Leon in Spain. He trained to be a lawyer and was so good at the job that he was chosen to be professor of law at the University of Salamanca. He could have led a quiet academic life but King Philip II had other ideas. Turibius’ reputation as a virtuous man brought him to the king’s attention and his appointment at the age of 40 as chief judge to the Inquisition based in Granada. His care and success in this job led to him being named as the Archbishop of Lima even though he had never been ordained.
He was, quite naturally, horrified by this proposal. He knew the law well enough to list every objection to a layman being promoted to a Church office. But the Church needed a strong and fearless man of faith to work in Peru. Turibius’ objections were overcome by persuasion and he was ordained priest and consecrated as Archbishop and sent off to Peru.
It is a truism that office changes a person. Turibius, coming from a comfortable and healthy life as a successful lawyer and judge found himself looking after 18 000 square miles of Peruvian diocese. Peru had been conquered by the Spanish army. The indigenous population had been abused, exploited and enslaved to work in the silver mines. The original intention of bringing a new people to Christ was lost in the rush for wealth.
Turibius travelled alone through trackless country along coastlines, over mountains, through jungles and deserts. He met local communities and learned their dialects. This brought him almost immediately into conflict with corrupt secular and church authorities. Distance from Spain meant that most abuses went unpunished. The conquerors who had taken control of Peru in 1542 continued their tyranny, oppression and cynical disregard for any Christian principles.
Turibius fought hard to uncover and cure the endemic injustice and vice. He evangelised those who had been forcibly baptised and brought them, and the crooked priests too, into a proper understanding of what it is to be Christian. He continued to travel. Each journey took him seven years and he managed to visit every part of his diocese. He had churches and hospitals built wherever he went and set up religious communities to serve them. In 1591 he founded the first seminary in the Americas in Lima. He also assembled 13 synods and three provincial councils over time so that the Church had a consistent and well audited vision throughout the country. “Time is not our own,” he used to say, “and we must give a strict accounting of it.”
The civil authorities whose main interest was the generation of wealth from this far flung province of Spain continued to make life difficult for Turibius. The consequence was that Turibius came to be seen more and more as the champion of the rights of the indigenous people and a model of muscular Christian virtue.
In March 1606 Turibius caught a fever. He dragged himself to the nearest church where he received the last sacrament, dying shortly afterwards. The power of his reputation as a man whose interest was the good of the people led to his canonisation in 1726. The Age of Enlightenment was dawning and people needed to be reminded by the example of people like Turibius that there is more to life than materialism.
Author: C B Whittle