VÉLEZ, RAFAEL. — Spanish Capuchin prelate and theologian, born at Vélez (Malaga) on 15 October 1777 and died in the monastery of Herbón on 3 August 1850.
Lecturer in philosophy and theology at Ecija and Cadiz, where the success of the Cortes provided him with the subject of his first work: El preservativo contra la irreligión de los planes de la filosofía contra la religión y el Estado (Cadiz 1812), an outline of the revolutionary plan in Europe and especially in Spain. On 30 September 1816 he was elected bishop of Ceuta and was consecrated on 13 July 1817.
In 1818 he published La apologia del altar y del trono, the apologetic work that aroused the greatest resonance in Spain in the mid-nineteenth century. The royalists received it enthusiastically, while the constitutionalists and the exalted liberals declared war on the work and its author, who was forced to take the path of exile.
After the liberal government was overthrown following the decisive intervention at the Congress of Verona, V. was recalled and appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Charles III. In 1824 he was promoted to the see of Burgos and shortly afterward became archbishop of Santiago. After Ferdinand VII’s death, there was an attempt to reestablish the constitutional regime. V. then opposed the anticlerical laws; on 21 April 1835 he was exiled to Minorca and was able to return to his diocese only on 26 June 1844. He devoted all his income to the poor; he founded a seminary in Santiago (1829), a home for incurables, a hospital for cholera patients, the Casa dei Venerabili for retired priests and spiritual exercises, and restored ecclesiastical discipline, which had been undermined by the revolution.