Solano, apostle of Indians and Africans

Upon arrival in the Viceroyalty of Peru, Solano was sent to the Andean village of Tucumán in what is today Argentina, where he performed miraculous deeds. Birds followed him. A bull that had killed two Indians in the ring before breaking loose encountered Solano at the town plaza and became his pet. Solano devoted much of his time in Tucumán to singing to the natives of nearby Paraguay. He immediately learned many indigenous languages and preached to the natives in their tongues. The day an army of 6,000 Indians surrounded Tucumán, the Indians put down their arms and surrendered to the power of Christ. Solano returned from Tucumán and Paraguay to Lima, walking with cilices on his body and nails on his soles. He headed north to Trujillo in Peru to tend the emerging communities of slaves and Indians who laboured in the sugar mills of the Pacific coast. But it was in the Nineveh that was Lima where he performed most of his salvific work. Solano was a preacher who did not just pacify birds, bulls, African slaves and Paraguayan Indians. He also had the ability to terrify Spanish, Portuguese and Creole townsmen or vecinos. Solano was the Savonarola of Lima.