Diego Luis de San Vitores

          Diego Jerónimo de San Vitores y Alonso de Mauluendo was born on November 12, 1627 into a noble family in northern Spain. Diego was attracted to religious life early. When he was 11, Diego decided he wanted to enter the Jesuits. His parents wanted him to pursue a military career instead. But after two years, they relented and in 1640 Diego entered into the novitiate for the Society of Jesus. He studied in Alcalá de Henares and was ordained on December 23, 1651. After his ordination, in the early years, Father San Vitores taught in various schools until the Superior General of the Jesuits agreed to give him a missionary assignment in 1659. He wanted to go to China or Japan, but the Superior General sent him to the Philippines.

          Father San Vitores left Cadiz, Spain, on May 15, 1660, sailing first to Mexico where he would stay for almost 2 years before completing the trip to the Philippines.  On the voyage to the Philippines, Father San Vitores’ ship stopped in Guam to restock supplies.  He met the islanders – known as the Chamorro – and quickly concluded that his vocation was to serve in Guam, not the Philippines.  In Manilla, Father San Vitores learned the Tagalog language and took over training of Jesuit novices and administering at a university.  Over the next 5 years, he would conduct missions in Luzon and on Mindoro, but Father San Vitores still wanted to return to Guam.  In 1664, leveraging his family connections, Father San Vitores wrote to King Philip IV of Spain asking him to establish a mission to Guam.  The king agreed.  Father San Vitores was selected to lead the mission to Guam (or the Marianas Islands, named in honor of Mariana of Austria, the Queen Regent of Spain).  Accompanying Father San Vitores to Guam were 5 other Jesuits and 30 laymen, including the young catechist Saint Pedro Calungsod.        

         They landed on Guam in June of 1668.  Initially, things went very well.  Chief Kepuha of the Chamorro welcomed the missionaries, even giving land so that they could build the first Catholic church in Hagatna, which San Vitores named in Mary’s honor.  Father San Vitores also opened a school for boys.  Different Jesuits travelled to islands in the archipelago to evangelize.  While today Guam’s population is almost entirely Catholic, the faith took time to establish roots.  In the time of Father San Vitores, the faith created conflict with traditional caste systems of the Chamorros and the missionaries were very bright-line in their zeal, shunning tradtional beliefs and practices of the Chamorros like veneration of ancestral skulls in homes.  Tensions between the Chamorros and the Spanish rose, especially after Chief Kepuha’s death in 1669.  Ultimately relations broke down into what is known as the Chamorro-Spanish War.  Priests and those helping the missions were attacked, with some killed.  

         Father San Vitores began to realize that marytrdom was likely.  On April 1, 1672, it came.  Father San Vitores and Pedro Calungsod were in the village of Tumon.  A man named Matapang and a companion found them.  Angry that Father San Vitores baptized his child without his approval, Matapang and his companion speared Pedro Calungsod and clubbed Father San Vitores on the head, killing them both.  They then threw the bodies of San Vitores and Calungsod into the sea.  

         Over time, though, the faith would blossom.  Father San Vitores’ cause for canonization was opened not long after his death, but saw renewed interest after World War II and the end of Japan’s occupation of Guam, when the Catholic Church was being reestablished.

          Blessed Diego Luis de San Vitores is considered the Apostle of Marianas Islands and the patron saint of the Archdiocese of Agana in Guam. The location at which Blessed San Vitores (and his companion Saint Pedro Calungsod) were martyred is on the National Register of Historical Places. Because his body was thrown into the sea after his death, there are no known first class relics of Blessed San Vitores.