SALAZAR, FRANCISCO DOMINGO de. - Dominican, first bishop of Manila, b. in 1512 at La Bastida (Roja) on the Ebro, d. at Madrid on 4 Dec. 1594. He entered the Dominican convent of S. Esteban at Salamanca on 16 Nov. 1546, after studying at that university where his teacher was Francisco de Vitoria (q.v.).
In 1548 he went to Mexico, where he taught theology and attained the rank of magister. He was then a missionary in the province of Guajaca, where he vigorously defended the rights of the Indians. From 1558 to 1560 he accompanied a Spanish expedition to Florida. He later became prior in Mexico, provincial vicar, and first consultor of the Holy Office in the New World. He was summoned to Madrid to defend the interests of the province and safeguard the rights of the Indians; he made a strong impression on King Philip II, who presented him as the first bishop of Manila, created on 6 Feb. 1579 as suffragan to Mexico. With 20 Dominicans and 6 secular priests, he set sail for Mexico, from where ships usually sailed for the Philippines. Due to the plague, S. arrived in Mexico with only two Dominicans, one of whom had to remain there because of illness. Four more Jesuits joined him. In March 1581 he landed at Manila. There he built the cathedral and a hospital for the natives and on 16 Oct. 1582 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 a junta, which decreed that the Jesuit Alonso Sanchez should be sent to Spain to defend the natives. With the religious, and especially with the Augustinians, he engaged in a long conflict to assert the bishop’s rights against the privileges of the religious. On 18 June 1583 he wrote to Philip II arguing that Spain had the right to occupy China militarily, despite its location in the Portuguese sphere of influence, and to open the way for missionaries to evangelize China by force, hitherto closed to them. After seven years, in another letter to Philip II on 24 June 1590, he retracted this theory, by which it would have been permissible to open the way for missionaries by force.
He earned the honorific title of the “Las Casas of the Philippines” for his struggle against the tribute imposed by the Spaniards on the natives and especially against Governor Gomez Perez Dasmarinas. Despite his advanced age, on 26 June 1591 he set out for Spain to secure the missionary cause of the Philippines before the king. Philip II declared himself willing to endow the archdiocese of Manila and the dioceses of Nueva Segovia, Nueva Cáceres, and Cebu. By a bull of 14 Aug. 1595 Manila was separated from Mexico and elevated to an autonomous ecclesiastical province. He had already died at Madrid at the age of 82.