Note 14 — Chapter XXXIII

Juan de Borja, a native of Osuna, professed in that city. He became fluent in the Bisayan tongue, and labored in the missions of Mambúsao (1640, 1659), Barbarán (1644, 1656), Otón (1645), and Batan (1653); being prior of the convent of Santo Niño (1657), definitor (1659), president of the chapter (1662), and prior of the convent of Guadalupe (1665). In 1665 he commissioned the founding of the Augustinian hospice for the Philippines in Mexico, known as Santo Tomás de Villanueva, of which he was superior until his death in 1683. He wrote a religious treatise in the Bisayan language, while many of his letters were preserved by the order. See Pérez’s Catálogo, p. 112.

The hospice was actually founded in 1667, under the advocacy of the Santo Limosnero of Valencia [i.e., “the charitable saint of Valencia”—alluding to St. Thomas of Villanueva; he was bishop of Valencia, and died in 1555]; it was used by the Augustinians until it was confiscated by the Mexicans at the time of their revolution, in 1818. See Pérez, ut supra, note. ↑