ZUMÁRRAGA (CUMARRAGA), JUAN. — First bishop of Mexico, born toward the end of 1468 or at the beginning of 1469 at Taria de Durango, died in Mexico on 3 June 1548.
He entered the Franciscan convent of Abrojo and subsequently became guardian, definitor, and provincial. In 1527 Charles V appointed him inquisitor for Navarre against witchcraft; on 12 December 1527 he presented him as the first bishop of Mexico, although the appointment did not then proceed because of the political struggle with Clement VII (the sack of Rome). At the end of August 1528 Z. sailed together with the first officials, who were destined to govern Mexico civilly, and landed there on 6 December 1528 with the title of elected bishop. As protector of the Indians, he opposed their oppressors. The officials of the First Audiencia succeeded in bringing him into disfavor at court, so that Charles V withheld the bull by which Z. had been confirmed bishop of Mexico on 2 September 1530, and summoned him to Spain to justify himself. Having arrived in his homeland on 17 March 1533, Z. cleared himself splendidly, and on 27 April 1533 was consecrated at Valladolid. With a group of artisans and six women for the education of Indian girls, he returned to Mexico in October 1534. To avoid difficulties with the civil government, Z. renounced the title of protector of the Indians, which passed to the more benevolent Second Audiencia and then, on 17 November 1535, to the first viceroy of Mexico, Antonio de Mendoza. On 27 June 1535 the inquisitor general Alvaro Manrique, archbishop of Seville, appointed Z. apostolic inquisitor of the city and diocese of Mexico.
When, after the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe (1531), the mass conversion of the Indians began, Z. organized the Church and ecclesiastical life in Mexico. Despite the great difficulties, principally concerning the validity of mass baptisms and the validity of the marriages of polygamists—difficulties later resolved by the celebrated bull Altitudo of Paul III of 1 July 1537—Z. devoted himself with great zeal to the conversion of the Indians.
In the struggle against idolatry and superstition, he had a great number of temples and idols destroyed. He built churches and convents, hospitals, especially in Mexico and Vera Cruz, and schools for boys and girls; he founded the celebrated college of Tlatelolco; he promoted good morals, trades, and industry; and, after the publication of the Nuevas Leyes, which prohibited the enslavement of the Indians, he succeeded in preventing a bloody uprising of the colonists. In 1539 Z. had the first printing press in the New World installed in Mexico, through the agency of Juan Cromberger of Seville, at which many books for the mission among the Indians were printed, for example: Breve y mas compendiosa doctrina christiana en lengua mexicana y castellana (Mexico 1539); Manual de adultos (there 1540); Doctrina christiana por instrucción y información de los Indios (there 1544). Z. was the author of catechetical books, for example Doctrina cristiana breve para enseñanza de los niños (there 1543) and: Doctrina breve muy p'uechosa etc. (there 1544). In 1545 he wished to resign his diocese in order to go as a missionary to China, despite his advanced age. On 11 February 1546 Paul III established Mexico as an archbishopric, separating it from the metropolitan see of Seville and assigning to it as suffragans Oaxaca, Michoacan, Tlaxcala, Guatemala, and Ciudad Real de Chiapas. Z. became its first archbishop, but died before the relevant bull reached Mexico.