The Titular Patriarchate of the West Indies (Latin: Patriarchatus Indiarum Occidentalium) is a Latin Rite Titular Patriarchate of the Roman Catholic Church. It is vacant since the death of its last holder in 1963.
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King Ferdinand V of Castile asked Pope Leo X to establish a patriarchate for the ecclesiastical government of the American territories discovered by the Spaniards. The Holy See was not keen to accept the establishment of such an autonomous Spanish American church and, on 11 May 1524, Clement VII agreed to create it but only as honorific, without jurisdiction and without clergy. In addition, the Patriarch was banned from actually residing in the Americas. Antonio de Rojas, archbishop of Granada and bishop of Palencia, was the first patriarch. The following patriarchs were the bishop of Jaén Esteban Gabriel Merino (1530–1535) and the archbishop of Granada Fernando, Niño de Guevara (not the homonymous cardinal) (1546–1552). After the Niño de Guevara's death the office remained vacant because Philip II, against the Holy See policy, wished an actual jurisdicional Patriarchate. Finally, the king agreed in 1591 to propose the archbishop of Mexico City (but who was actually resident in Madrid as President of the Council of the Indies) Pedro Moya de Contreras. However, the new patriarch died before he could take the oath of his new office. In 1602, Philip III abandoned the idea of a fully jurisdictional Patriarchate and it turned into a merely honorific title for noble clergymen.[1]
In 1705, the Patriarch Carlos de Borja Centellas was appointed by the Pope to be Vicar General of the Spanish Armies, but from 1736 on Clement XII merged the office of Vicar General of the Spanish Armies with the Patriarchate of the West Indies pro tempore et ad septennium (temporarily, for seven years), and from 1741 on to the Royal Palace's Chaplaincy.[1] The merge of the Patriarchate and the Military Vicariate was definitively decreed by Clement XIII in 1762.[2] In 1933, Patriarch Ramón Pérez Rodríguez was appointed bishop of Cádiz and Ceuta.[3] The previous year, the Republican Government had abolished the Military Vicariate. Thus, the Patriarchate remained vacant. During the Civil War, the Nationalists organized a religious military service and the Holy See appointed the Cardinal Archbishop of Toledo Isidro Gomá as interim Pontifical Delegate. In 1940, Gomá died and the auxiliary bishop Gregorio Modrego was commissioned with the deceased cardinal's military duties. In 1942, Modrego was appointed bishop of Barcelona. During all that time, the Patriarchate remained vacant.[2] In 1946, the bishop of Madrid Leopoldo Eijo y Garay was appointed Patriarch of the West Indies, but without the Military Ordinariate (a military archbisophric would be established in 1950). After Eijo's death this titular patriarchate has remained vacant, is not likely to be filled and has effectively fallen into abeyance.