Toribio Alfonso de Mogrovejo y Robles was a Spanish lawyer-statesman who held the chair of canon law at the University of Salamanca and served as a layman as Grand Inquisitor of Granada — one of the most powerful judicial offices in Habsburg Spain. In 1578, despite his being a layman and never having been ordained, Philip II named him Archbishop of Lima, the metropolitan see of the entire Spanish South American empire. He received minor orders, priestly ordination, and episcopal consecration in 1580, and sailed for Peru in 1581.
He arrived at Lima in May 1581 and immediately began the most extensive episcopal visitation in the history of Catholic missions. Across twenty-five years he travelled some 25,000 miles on foot, on horseback, on muleback, and by canoe through the Andes, the Amazon basin, the coastal deserts, and the Altiplano — visiting every village of his vast diocese, often four and five times each, learning the major indigenous languages (Quechua, Aymara, Mochica), confirming an estimated half-million indigenous Christians personally, and organizing a major program of Catholic education and pastoral care in the native languages.
He held the Third Council of Lima (1582–83) — the foundational synod of the Spanish American Church, which produced the first major catechism in Quechua, Aymara, and Spanish, and the canonical norms that governed all Spanish American dioceses for the next two centuries. He died at Saña during one of his pastoral visitations on March 23, 1606. Personally close to Rose of Lima (whom he confirmed), to Francis Solano, to Martin de Porres, and to Juan Masías — the great Lima cluster of saints all overlapped at his cathedral. Canonized 1726.