Vélez, Rafael

VÉLEZ, RAFAEL. - Spanish Capuchin prelate and theologian, b. at Vélez (Malaga) on 15 Oct. 1777 and d. in the monastery of Herbón on 3 Aug. 1850.

Reader of philosophy and theology at Ecija and at Cadiz, where the success of the Cortes offered him 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), a picture of the revolutionary plan in Europe and especially in Spain. On 30 Sept. 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 of greatest resonance in Spain in the middle of the 19th century. The royalists received it with enthusiasm; the constitutionalists and the exalted liberals declared war on the work and on its author, who had to take the road of exile.

After the liberal government was overthrown following the decisive intervention at the Congress of Verona, V. was recalled and named Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of Charles III. In 1824 he was promoted to the see of Burgos and shortly afterwards archbishop of Santiago. After the death of Ferdinand VII, an attempt was made to re-establish the constitutional regime once again. V. then opposed the anticlerical laws; on 21 Apr. 1835 he was exiled to Minorca and was able to return to his diocese only on 26 June 1844. He devoted all his revenues to the poor; he founded a seminary at Santiago (1829), a shelter for the incurably ill, a hospital for cholera patients, the House of the Venerable for retired priests and for spiritual exercises, and he restored ecclesiastical discipline, which had been struck down by the revolution.

Felice da Mareto