Cristóbal de Torres

The Most Reverend Cristóbal de Torres, OP
Archbishop of Santafé en Nueva Granada
1666 engraving of Cristóbal de Torres
Archdiocese	Santafé en Nueva Granada
Appointed	8 January 1635
Term ended	8 July 1654
Predecessor	Bernardino de Almansa Carrión
Successor	Juan de Arguinao y Gutiérrez, OP
Orders
Ordination	March 1590
Consecration	1635 by Luis Córdoba Ronquillo, O.SS.T
Personal details
Born	27 December 1573 Burgos, Castile, Spain
Died	8 July 1654 (aged 80) Bogotá, Viceroyalty of Peru

Cristóbal de Torres y Motones, OP (27 December 1573 – 8 July 1654) was a Spanish-born prelate of the Catholic Church in New Spain. A member of the Dominican Order, in 1635 he was appointed archbishop of the Archdiocese of Santafé en Nueva Granada (now the Archdiocese of Bogotá). There, he was one of the first bishops in New Spain to admit indigenous people to communion, and he later founded Del Rosario University in Bogotá.

Cristóbal de Torres y Motones was born in Burgos, Spain, on 27 December 1573. His father, Juan de Torres, was a nobleman and a notary, and his mother, Águeda de Motones, was of Flemish descent.

Torres entered the Dominican Order and in 1599, received the habit at age 16. He studied in Salamanca, and was ordained a priest in March 1590 in the Monastery of San Pablo in Burgos.

After ordination, Torres began his career as an educator, at first as a professor of arts and theology at his monastery in Burgos, and later as a theology instructor at San Pedro Mártir Monastery in Toledo, and finally as master of students at San Ildefnso el Real Monastery in Toro. He was elected twice to serve as prior of his monastery.

In 1614, the bishop of Córdoba, Diego Mardones, a Dominican, admonished Torres for preaching a sermon supporting the position of St. Thomas Aquinas regarding the redemption and salvation of Mary. Torres argued that Mary was, like all people, the object of the Christ's redemption and salvation, as opposed to "immaculatists" who excluded Mary from the redeemed. After the bishop's admonition, Torres recanted his views.