Juan Ramos de Lora

Fray Juan Ramos de Lora, (Los Palacios y Villafranca, Seville, June 23, 1722 - Mérida, Venezuela, November 9, 1790), was a Franciscan missionary, the first Bishop of Mérida and of Maracaibo and founder of the University of Los Andes, the second university in the country after the University of Caracas (current Central University of Venezuela).

Biography

Juan Ramos de Lora was born in Los Palacios y Villafranca on June 23, 1722, being baptized days later in the parish church of Santa María la Blanca. His parents, residents of Los Palacios, were wealthy farmers, which that allowed them to procure for their son an education superior to that of the majority of the children of the town. At fifteen years of age he entered the convent of San Antonio de Padua in Seville, where he studied Grammar, Humanities, Philosophy and Metaphysics.

He professed himself as a choir religious in the Order of Saint Francis in 1743, and continued his studies in Theology, Scholastics and Scripture, being ordained a priest in 1746, when he was 24 years old.

Three years later he went as a missionary to Mexican lands to the convent of San Fernando in Mexico City. After a few months he was assigned, with other missionaries, to Sierra Gorda, where he remained for sixteen years, presiding over the missions of Santiago de Jalpán and living with the Pan Indians.

Between 1767 and 1772 he was carrying out his missionary work in Baja California. In that last year he was called again to the convent of San Fernando in Mexico City Later, following the creation of a new Bishopric in Venezuela, made up of Mérida and Maracaibo, Ramos de Lora was appointed to be the first holder of the see. And it is that he had become a prominent architect of Mexican and Californian evangelization, which led him to be considered the ideal person to launch the new Venezuelan Diocese .

Episcopacy

Bishop of Merida in Venezuela

The official constitution of the Diocese of Mérida was given by the Bull of February 17, 1778. Fray Juan Ramos de Lora was appointed Bishop of the Diocese of Mérida by King Carlos III on August 31, 1780, being approved by Pope Pius VI on September 24, 1782. He was consecrated in Puebla de los Ángeles (Mexico) in December of that same year. He arrived in Maracaibo on March 16, 1784, remaining in this city for almost a year. On February 26, 1785, he arrived in Mérida, on March 29. One month and three days later, he carried out the most important creation of his Episcopate, the Seminary of Mérida.

The Bishop assigned the Convent of the Franciscan Fathers, which was unoccupied, as the temporary headquarters of the Seminary. Then he issued thirteen clauses to establish the Institute. Two months after its creation, the Seminary already had 42 students, according to a letter addressed to the King by the Bishop. This was a splendid beginning that made Bishop Lora conceive the idea of raising his own building.

Encouraged by such desires, he addressed the King in a letter dated April 21, 1787, where he requested authorization for the construction of the building. This request was granted by the publication of the Royal Decree of March 20, 1789. There, it was also granted the name San Buenaventura Seminary, with all the privileges and privileges corresponding to the Conciliar Seminaries.. Bishop Lora also requested that the classes of Theology, Royal Canon Law and other sciences that would be erected in the future, have the same value and rights as those that had been founded at present and that the time spent studying some and others in any Universities and Courts for the reception of degrees and merit, in the same way as in the other Colleges erected or constituted with royal approval. All his requests were granted and by June 1790 the building was finished.

Monsignor Lora, whose memory lives on in the annals of Mérida, died on November 9, 1790 in that Venezuelan town.

The Reforming Bishop

Upon arriving in his new diocese, Ramos de Lora found himself in conflict with the Diocese of Bogotá over the jurisdiction of Pamplona, which led him to a lengthy dispute, which cost the diocese of Mérida 7,660 reales de vellón, according to the agent of the bishop in Madrid; this despite the fact that the jurisdiction of Mérida over the demarcation of Pamplona had been previously stipulated.

In Mérida, the bishop found himself in a deteriorating situation that was reflected in the insufficient preparation of the clergy, their concentration in urban areas, with the consequent abandonment of rural areas, and an evident affinity for earthly businesses; The root of the problem was found in the isolation of the province and the distance that separated it from Caracas, to whose bishopric it belonged until 1784, more in theory than in reality. Ramos de Lora will try to counteract this situation through two types of measures: first, to reform the battered existing clergy and, second, the establishment of a Tridentine seminary and college, intended for the training of future priests, where emphasis would be placed on disciplines such as Latin, Theology and Grammar.

The reforms carried out in Mérida still influence the cultural characteristics of the city. Ramos de Lora is an emblematic and present figure of it.

III Centenary of Bishop Ramos de Lora

On June 23, 2022, the three hundredth anniversary of the birth of Bishop Ramos de Lora was celebrated in the current city of Mérida (Venezuela), with a succession of religious and cultural events promoted by Gabriel León (student of the Faculty of Art ULA), who previously managed in 2019 to establish contact with relatives of the Bishop in Seville, a fact that gave rise to the possibility of strengthening ties for commemorative purposes between Venezuela and Spain. The Archdiocese of Mérida, the University of Los Andes, the City Hall of Los Palacios and Villafranca and the Parroquia Mayor de Santa María la Blanca participated; In this way, they managed to establish an institutional relationship through the founding of an international cultural-historical commission entitled: III Centenary Bishop Ramos de Lora, undertaken by Joaquín Ramos (Bishop's relative) and chaired by the Presbyter Diego Pérez Ojeda (Priest of the Major Parish of Santa María la Blanca). The honorary membership of this commission also corresponds to the Rectorate of the Very Illustrious University of Los Andes governed by Mario Bonucci Rossini, who decreed this same day in an Extraordinary Session of the University Council, the cultural year Bishop Ramos de Lora, to publicize the figure and legacy of the Illustrious Prelate, with numerous acts that give him the deserved exaltation.

On June 23, 2023, the Obispo Ramos de Lora Cultural Year closes.