SALAZAR, FRANCISCO DOMINGO de. — Dominican, first bishop of Manila, b. in 1512 at Labastida (Roja) on the Ebro, d. in Madrid on 4 Dec. 1594. He entered the Dominican convent of S. Esteban in Salamanca on 16 Nov. 1546, after studying at that University, VITA (v.) was his teacher.
In 1548 he went to Mexico, where he taught theology and received the degree of « magister ». He was then a missionary in the province of Guajaca, where he vigorously defended the Indians. From 1558 to 1560 he accompanied a Spanish expedition to Florida. He was subsequently prior in Mexico, provincial vicar, and first consultor of the Holy Office in the New World. He was sent to Madrid to defend the interests of the province and safeguard the rights of the Indians; he made an impression on the king. Philip II presented him as the first bishop of Manila, erected on 6 Feb. 1579 as a suffragan see of Mexico. With 20 Dominicans and 6 secular priests he sailed for Mexico, from which ships customarily set out for the Philippines. Because of the plague, S. reached Mexico with only two Dominicans, one of whom had to remain there because of illness. Four other Jesuits joined him. In March 1581 he landed at Manila. There he built the Cathedral and a hospital for the indigenous population, and on 16 Oct. 1582 he held the first diocesan Synod, approved by a brief of Gregory XIV on 18 Apr. 1591. On 14 Apr. 1586 he convened the missionaries in an assembly, which decreed that the Jesuit Alonso Sanchez should be sent to Spain to defend the indigenous peoples. With the religious, and especially with the Augustinians, he sustained a prolonged conflict in order to assert the rights of the bishop against the privileges of the religious orders. On 18 June 1583 he wrote to Philip II, arguing that Spain had the right to occupy China militarily, although it lay within the Portuguese sphere of influence, and to open by force of arms the way for missionaries to evangelize China, which until then had been closed to them. After seven years, in another letter to Philip II dated 24 June 1590, he retracted this theory, according to which it would have been lawful to open the way for missionaries by force of arms.
He earned the honorary name of the « Las Casas of the Philippines » for his struggle against the tributes imposed by the Spaniards on the indigenous peoples, and especially against the governor Gomez Perez Dasmarillas. Despite his advanced age, on 26 June 1591 he set out for Spain to secure the triumph of the Philippine missionary cause at the court. Philip II declared himself willing to endow the archdiocese of Manila and the dioceses of Nueva Segovia, Nueva Cáceres, and Cebú. By a bull of 14 Aug. 1595, Manila was separated from Mexico and elevated to an autonomous ecclesiastical province. S. had already died in Madrid at the age of 82.