Juan de Ribera's father was
Pedro Afán de Ribera,
Viceroy of Naples and Duke of Alcala. His mother died when he was very young. Ribera studied at the
University of Salamanca. Ordained as priest in 1557, Pope
Pius IV appointed him
Bishop of Badajoz on 27 May 1562 at the age of 30. There he dedicated himself to teaching the
catechism to Roman Catholics and counteracting
Protestantism. He was appointed as the
Archbishop of Valencia on 3 December 1568. In 1599 he ordained
Alfonso Coloma as Bishop of Barcelona.
King Philip III of Spain later appointed him
Viceroy of Valencia in 1602, and thus he became both the religious and the civil authority. In this role he founded the
Museum of the Patriarch, known among Valencians as the
College of Saint John, entrusted to the formation of priests according to the spirit and the dispositions of the
Council of Trent.
Expulsion of the Moriscos . As archbishop, Ribera dealt with the issue of Valencia's large
Morisco population, descendants of Muslims who converted to Christianity at threat of exile. The Moriscos had been kept separate from the main population by a variety of decrees that prohibited them from holding public office, entering the priesthood, or taking certain other positions; as a result, the Moriscos had maintained their own culture rather than assimilated. Some of them did, in fact, still practice forms of crypto-Islam. Ribera despised the Moriscos as heretics and traitors, a dislike he shared with much of Valencia's Christian populace. With the
Duke of Lerma, Ribera helped convince Philip III to at least expel the Moriscos instead. Ribera helped sell the plan by noting that all the property of the Moriscos could be impounded to provide money for the treasury. ==Canonization==