Juan Bautista Rico

Juan García López-Rico, known in religion as Juan Bautista de la Concepción, was born on 23 July 1561 in Almodóvar del Campo in the region of La Mancha, Castile, Spain. He was the son of Marcos García Ximénez and Isabel López Rico. Raised in a devout Catholic family during the era of the Spanish Catholic Reformation, he showed early signs of piety and intellectual ability. He studied at the University of Baeza and later in Toledo before discerning a religious vocation.

In 1580, at about the age of nineteen, he entered the Order of the Most Holy Trinity (the Trinitarians) at the convent of Valdepeñas, taking the name Juan Bautista. He was subsequently ordained a priest. By the late sixteenth century the Trinitarian Order, founded in the twelfth century by Saint John of Matha for the ransom of Christian captives, had experienced a decline in the rigor of its original observance. Deeply influenced by the Carmelite reforms of Saint Teresa of Ávila and Saint John of the Cross, as well as by his own life of prayer and penance, Juan Bautista sought to restore a stricter, more contemplative form of Trinitarian life.

After years of effort and despite opposition from within the order, he obtained a papal brief from Pope Clement VIII in 1597 authorizing a reform. The first house of the Discalced Trinitarians was established at Valdepeñas in 1599. The reformed religious went barefoot, embraced greater poverty and silence, and combined intense contemplative prayer with the traditional apostolate of redeeming captives. As the first major superior of the new congregation, Juan Bautista founded numerous convents across Spain and worked to give the reform stable constitutions and a spiritual identity. He also composed writings on the interior life. The process of reform involved ongoing tension with the unreformed (Calced) Trinitarians.

His health was undermined by austerities and constant labor. He died on 14 February 1613 in Córdoba, Spain. He was beatified by Pope Pius VII on 18 September 1819 and canonized by Pope Paul VI on 25 May 1975. His feast is observed on 14 February. Saint Juan Bautista de la Concepción is remembered as the founder of the Discalced Trinitarians and as a representative of the reforming spirit of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Spanish Catholicism.