CARDENAS, BERNARDÍN

CARDENÁS, BERNARDÍN. - Franciscan friar, missionary bishop of the Assumption (Asunción) in Paraguay; b. at Chuquisaca (now Sucre in Bolivia). He donned the Franciscan habit in Lima. He subsequently discharged with distinction the offices of lector, definitor, delegate commissioner of the Argentine holy Council, visitor, and apostolic preacher. He brought innumerable idolatrous Indians to the faith and brought under the scepter of the King of Spain the warlike tribes of Challana, Songo, Chacapa, and Simaco. Philip IV, to reward him, presented him to Urban VIII as bishop of Paraguay on 21 Feb. 1638, and the relevant bulls were dispatched to him on 18 Aug. 1640. His episcopate would have passed peacefully had he not advanced claims to the Jesuit college and reductions. The Jesuits, alleging that his episcopal consecration was invalid because it had taken place before the papal bulls arrived, appealed to the civil authorities, by whom he was repeatedly driven into exile. He ended up first in Santa Fe, then in Potosí, resuming the life of a missionary and meanwhile sending appeals to Rome against what had occurred. The painful dispute, long debated on both sides, was never definitively resolved. In 1666 he was transferred to the see of Santa Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia, where he died before 16 May 1672.