Juan María de Salvatierra

Juan María de Salvatierra, S.J., (November 15, 1648 – July 17, 1717) was a Catholic missionary to the Americas.

Salvatierra was born Gianmaria Salvatierra in Milan, then the capital of the Duchy of Milan, a part of the Holy Roman Empire. His father was of Spanish origin, and his mother was Italian. He studied in the Jesuit college of Parma. It was there that he accidentally came across a book on the "Indian missions," which fascinated him. He entered the Jesuit Order in Genoa and in 1675 he sailed for the Viceroyalty of New Spain, present-day Mexico. There he further studied theology, and was for several years professor of rhetoric in the College of the Holy Spirit in Puebla.

Declining a position in the cathedral, he received permission to devote himself to the conversion of the indigenous people of southwestern North America, and in June 1680, set out for the lands of the Tarahumara people in the mountains of Chihuahua. He lived among them for 10 years, founding several Catholic missions along the way. He was subsequently appointed visitor of the Spanish missions in the Sonoran Desert in the Sonora y Sinaloa Province of the Real Audiencia of Guadalajara in New Spain (Mexico). While there he formed a project for the "spiritual conquest" of Baja California, as all the military expeditions to that region of Las Californias had been without success.

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