Francisco Plancarte y Navarrete

Francisco Plancarte y Navarrete (October 21, 1856 – June 2, 1920) was born in Zamora, Michoacán, Mexico, the son of Jesus Plancarte Labastida and Maria de los Angeles Navarrete. He had two younger sisters, Maria Gertrudis and Maria Benita Virginia. According to his baptismal certificate, dated October 27, 1856, he was called José Francisco Hilarión. He grew up in a very religious family, and at the age of thirteen, support by his uncle, Antonio Plancarte y Labastida, he entered the Pontifical Latin American College in Rome. During the thirteen years that he lived in Europe doing his ecclesiastical studies, he visited museums, ruins and ancient monuments, and he observed archeological digs.

Education and priesthood On his return to Mexico, he immediately began directing the College of San Luis in Jacona, Michoacan, a school that Plancarte y Labastida had founded, Plancarte writes about the prosperous maritime trade, and about the men of science who were trained in the Campechan schools, which made him fall in love with Campeche even before the Pope appointed him bishop. Plancarte assumed his duties as head of the diocese on November 26, 1896.

While in Campeche, Plancarte continued his archaeological studies. He formed a second collection of ancient Mexican objects, similar to those of the first, among them a large, beautiful jade glass; he visited and studied Yucatan ruins and descended to the depths of a cenote. He was an active participant in the Latin American Plenary Council where he served as official rapporteur. in it, he concludes that Tamoanchan, the mythological cradle of civilization in Mexico, is located in the modern state of Morelos in south-central Mexico.

With the 1911 publication of Tamoanchan, Plancarte developed a rich ethnography; he also established a museum with valuable archaeological samples, much of which was lost during the Mexican Revolution.

Fourth Archbishop of Linares-Monterrey On November 30, 1911, Pope Pius X promoted Plancarte to the Archdiocese of Monterrey, and he moved there on May 5, 1912. Despite setbacks such as the destruction of the San Francisco church and the Convent of San Andrés in Monterrey and a typhoid epidemic, he developed great pastoral action, created new parishes and cared for the formation of seminarians, sending some to study in Rome. Because of the conflicts of the Carrancista revolution, he left Monterrey and lived in Chicago for four years. He took advantage of the exile to write his books on prehistory and protohistory of Mexico. Due to diabetes, his health declined and he died in Monterrey on June 2, 1920.