NAVARRETE, FERNANDEZ DOMINGO. – Spanish Dominican missionary, writer, and archbishop, born at Peñafiel (Valladolid) around 1618, died at S. Domingo (in the Antilles) in 1689.
He made his religious profession in the convent of his native city on 8 December 1635. After teaching for several years at Valladolid, in 1646 he set out for the Dominican missions overseas. He stayed in Mexico for some time, then went to the Philippines to teach in Manila (1648). In 1659, while returning to Spain for health reasons, he landed in China and remained in those Dominican missions, which he was appointed to lead in 1664. During the persecution (1665–69), among the Catholic missionaries interned, especially in Canton, the controversy over the Chinese rites arose, and N. became a steadfast opponent of them. At the beginning of 1673 he was in Rome to report on the missions in China and on the question of the rites. It was then considered making him director of all the Catholic missions in the Chinese Empire, an appointment he managed to avoid; later, however, he could not refuse the archbishopric of S. Domingo (1677). During his twelve years of episcopate he distinguished himself through his zeal and supported the Jesuit mission on the island, demonstrating that his tenacious opposition to the Chinese rites had no other motive than the conscientious defense of the truth, and that it had in no way diminished his charity and esteem for the fathers of the Society.
He left a major historical work on China, of which the first two parts were published: Tratados históricos, políticos, éticos y religiosos de la Monarchía de China... (Madrid 1676) and Controversias antiguas y modernas de la misión de la gran China (there 1679). He wrote various works in Chinese on Catholic truths, ethics, and so forth.