CÁRDENAS, BERNARDÍN

CÁRDENAS, BERNARDÍN. – Friar Minor and missionary bishop of the Assumption (Asunción) in Paraguay; born at Chuquaca (today Sucre, Bolivia). He donned the Franciscan habit at Lima. He subsequently discharged with distinction the offices of lector, definitor, delegate commissary of the sacred Argentine Council, visitor, and apostolic preacher. He brought countless idolatrous Indians to the faith and brought the warlike tribes of Challana, Songo, Chacapa, and Simaco under the scepter of the king of Spain. To reward him, Philip IV presented him to Urban VIII for appointment as bishop of Paraguay on 21 February 1638, and the relevant bulls were sent to him on 18 August 1640. His episcopate would have passed peacefully had he not asserted rights over the Jesuit college and reductions; the Jesuits therefore, alleging that his episcopal consecration was invalid because it had taken place before the papal bulls arrived, appealed to the intervention of the governmental authorities, by whom he was repeatedly expelled into exile. He first went to S. Fé, then to Potosi, resuming his life as a missionary while sending appeals to Rome against what had occurred. The painful question, long debated by both sides, was never definitively resolved. In 1666 he was transferred to the see of S. Cruz de la Sierra in Bolivia, where he died before 16 May 1672.

Aniceto Chiappini