Ecclesiastical Career
In 1639 Philip IV nominated him as bishop of Puebla de los Ángeles in Mexico (then the Spanish colony of New Spain) and Pope Urban VIII appointed him. He was consecrated at Madrid on December 27, 1639. He arrived in Veracruz on June 24, 1640, in the company of the new viceroy, Diego López Pacheco, 7th Duke of Escalona, whom he had gotten to know aboard ship. He was also named visitador (representative of the king) to investigate the two previous viceroys. He served as bishop of Puebla from 1640 to 1655 and as interim archbishop of Mexico from 1642 to 1643.
He founded the Dominican convent of Santa Inés, amended the by-laws of the seminary of San Juan, and founded the colleges of San Pedro and San Pablo. He also founded the girls school Purísima Concepción and worked diligently on completing the cathedral, which was dedicated April 18, 1649.
As bishop, Palafox y Mendoza distinguished himself by his efforts to protect the Native Americans from Spanish cruelty, forbidding any methods of conversion other than persuasion.
In this and other matters he met with the uncompromising hostility of the Jesuits, whom in 1647 he laid under an interdict. The Jesuits excommunicated him. Palafox twice, in 1647 and 1649, laid formal complaints against them at Rome. The pope, however, refused to approve his censures, and all he could obtain was a brief from Pope Innocent X (on May 14, 1648), commanding the Jesuits to respect the episcopal jurisdiction. On May 20, 1655, Palafox and the Jesuits signed an accord, but disagreements continued. In the same year the Jesuits succeeded in securing his transfer to the little see of Osma in Old Castile.
Palafox was an enthusiastic patron of the arts, and it was during his tenure in Puebla that the city became the musical center of New Spain. Composers such as Juan Gutierrez de Padilla, maestro di capilla of the cathedral under Palafox and the most famous seventeenth century composer in Mexico, brought the latest European music styles to the New World. Palafox also strongly believed in education in general. He founded the Biblioteca Palafoxiana on September 5, 1646, stocking it with five thousand books of science and philosophy.
Read more about this topic: Juan De Palafox Y Mendoza
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