Ignacio Montes de Oca y Obregón was born at Guanajuato, June 26, 1840, his father being Demetrio Montes de Oca, a well-known lawyer, and his mother being Mara de la Luz Obregón. When at the age of twelve years he was sent to England to study, returning to Mexico and entering the Seminario conciliar in 1856. He later went to Rome, where he received the degree of Doctor in Theology, in 1862. In 1863, he was Presbitero at the Basilica of San Juan de Letran in Mexico, and in 1865 became Doctor in Laws. For a time, he served as parish priest at Ipswich, England, but was soon appointed to a similar position in his native city. He was Chaplain of Honor to Maximilian and Pius IX appointed him his Secret Chancellor. Having raised Tamaulipas from a vicariato apostólico into a diocese, Pius IX appointed Señor Montes de Oca y Obregón its first Bishop, in 1871. Without availing himself of the permitted delay of one hundred days, the new-appointed prelate at once took charge of his exceptionally hard field. He was indefatigable in the discharge of his duties, making two pastoral journeys over his whole diocese, establishing a Seminario and founding a cathedral at the episcopal city, and restoring and enlarging churches throughout his domain. After this remarkable career in Tamaulipas, he was made Bishop of San Luis Potosí, where he has continued to display exceptional energy and wisdom.
Bishop Montes de Oca y Obregón writes both poetry and prose. In poetry he has published Poetas bucolicos Griegos (Greek Bucolic Poets), Ocios poeticos (Poetic Loiterings) and Odas de Pindaro (Pindar’s Odes). Of all three, editions have been printed both in Madrid and Mexico. His translations from the Greek poets are close and beautiful. In prose, he has published six volumes of Obras pastorales y oraciones (Pastoral Works and Orations) and a volume of Oraciones funebres (Funeral Orations). Señor Montes de Oca y Obregón especially shines in oratory. Of him Portilla says: “As a sacred orator, he possesses those endowments of spirit essential to oratory—most brilliant talent, vast and agreeable erudition, exquisite literary taste,—and to these spiritual endowments he joins in happy combination the physical qualities which serve for their realization—a fine presence, a noble bearing, a musical quality of voice—all that, in fine, which constitutes the irresistible enchantment of eloquence. All these qualities shine, in never-witnessed brilliancy, in his famous funeral oration on the Literary Dead, magnificent novelty which will make an epoch in the annals of sacred oratory in Mexico.”
Bishop Montes de Oca y Obregón is a member of the famous Arcadian Academy of Rome, bearing in it the name Ipandro Acaico. He was a member of Maximilian’s Academia de Ciencias y Literatura (Academy of Sciences and Literature). He is a Corresponding Member of the Mexican Academy. In 1899, he was Secretary of the Latin-American Council at Rome. In travels in Italy, France, and the United States, during the past three years, he has made several notable addresses.
JOAQUÍN GARCÍA ICAZBALCETA.
Great is my satisfaction at presiding over this meeting. It is more than two years that you have not gathered in general assembly; and on seeing three-months after three-months pass, without your coming to invite me to your regular meeting, I had come to ask myself the question: “Do the Conferences of San Vicente de Paul still exist in my diocese?” The President General of your pious brotherhood has, on various occasions in Mexico, directed to me the same question and with that zeal which distinguished him has asked me, with tears in his eyes: “Is it possible that charity is dead among the distinguished gentlemen of San Luis Potosí? Is it possible that there is no one who can arouse the members and revive the almost extinguished meetings?”
The sign of life, which you now give, coincides with the death of that illustrious President, and it is fitting that, in addressing you, I shall pay a tribute to the eminent savant, the fervent Christian, the exemplary member of your conferences, Don Joaquín García Icazbalceta.
Others have already pronounced his eulogy as a man of letters, as a historian, as the type of a man of wealth and of the flower of Mexican aristocracy. It falls to me to present him to you as a model member of the conferences and to briefly praise before you his charity and his obedience and attachment to the Church.
His was a long life and he employed it all in distributing benefits. Rich from his cradle, he preserved and increased his capital, without ever extorting from the poor, without unduly taking advantage of their labors, without ever practicing usury, that plague of our society which seems to most tempt those who have most wealth, and which the Gospel so clearly anathematizes. In all his vast territorial possessions, that dissimulated slavery, so common in some parts of the country, which chains the peasant for his whole life to one master and to one piece of ground without hope of bettering his condition, was never known. Most exact in his payments, he had further a box of savings, as he called it, for each of his employees, from the humblest to the highest, which really consisted of systematic gifts which he made them on the more important occasions of their lives or of the lives of their wives and children. Were they marrying? He supplied the necessary expenses without making any charge against them. Were children born; did disease come to afflict them; did death arrive? He generously opened his chest and alleviated their pains and necessities.
The works of mercy which he did among his own, he also practiced with strangers. Through long years, the conferences of Mexico found him visiting the houses of the poor and liberally succoring them; when he was their President, he exerted his influence inside and outside of the Capital, maintaining the fervor of the old members, and attracting new ones by his fine demeanor, his opportune appeals and his prudent persistency. How important is such tact in those who occupy the high posts in the conferences! The most ardent zeal, unless accompanied by prudence and judgment, far from attracting, repels, and instead of aiding, hinders good service of the poor and the prosperity of the association.