Rev. David Orique, O.P. awarded humanities grant to create Las Casas digital library
Rev. David Orique, O.P. ’25G, professor of history, was awarded a $65,000 research grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to expand access to the collected works of Bartolomé de las Casas, a Dominican priest, bishop, and scholar.
Las Casas, a prolific writer, is best known for his advocacy for Indigenous peoples in the 16th century, but English readers have limited access to his work since little has been translated. Limited availability has restricted understanding of the importance of Las Casas to theology, law, philosophy, literature, and anthropology, especially related to Christianity, Father Orique said.
Father Orique, who is fluent in Spanish, has taught at PC since 2011. In addition to a doctorate in history, he has master’s degrees in theology, history, Spanish literature, and business administration. He has lived, traveled, and conducted research in Spain, Portugal, and other European countries, and in 19 nations in Latin America.
At PC, he established the Bartolomé de las Casas Study Center and has organized numerous international conferences where scholars from around the world have discussed the life, labor, and legacy of Las Casas in matters related to contact, conquest, colonization, and conversion, and about the global heritage of the Order of Preachers.
The goal of the grant is to expand access to the writings of Las Casas and his contemporaries for students and scholars by creating an open digital library, using AI and digital analytics. The initial funding will establish a foundation for future online and print editions and translations of the writings of Las Casas and others.
“This grant, along with others planned, will make rare texts accessible to a global community of researchers and writers,” Father Orique said. “While the focus is Las Casas’s writings, our bigger goal is to bring this well-known and poorly understood member of the Order of Preachers in dialogue with his many contemporaries — Dominicans and others.”
Las Casas, born in Seville, Spain, arrived in the Americas in 1502. At first, he profited from the colonial system that compelled natives into forced labor and participated in expeditions of conquest. After witnessing abuses by conquistadors and colonists, he underwent a conversion in 1514, surrendered his land and freed his Indians, and began a lifelong crusade, lasting more than 50 years, of advocacy for recognition of the rights of Indigenous populations. To defend them, he initially supported importation of African slaves, something he later bitterly lamented, vigorously advocating for their rights as well, Father Orique said.
Las Casas entered the Order of Preachers in Santo Domingo in 1522. He was named the first resident bishop of Diocese of Chiapa, a region that is now northern Guatemala and southern Mexico. He is depicted in a stained glass window in St. Dominic Chapel at PC.
Father Orique, who grew up in central California, worked in commercial banking in the Bay area before entering the Order of Preachers at age 32. He was drawn to the Dominicans after meeting friars at St. Dominic Church in San Francisco and was ordained to the priesthood in 2001. His first assignment was as a campus minister at the Newman Center at the University of Oregon, where he also served the large Spanish-speaking community of the archdiocese, as he continues to do in New England. While in the Northwest, he earned a master’s degree and a doctorate, focusing on colonial and modern Latin America as well as the Iberian Atlantic.
Father Orique’s interests led him to connect with Rev. Edward Cleary, O.P., who taught political science at PC for 18 years and directed the Latin American Studies Program for 12 years. Father Orique visited the college with Father Cleary on various occasions before joining the faculty in 2011. The Rev. Edward Cleary, O.P. Memorial Lecture was established in Father Cleary’s honor.
Father Orique is a lifelong speaker of Spanish, a language he began learning from laborers on his family’s farm and continued studying from primary to graduate school. He also is fluent in Portuguese, the first language of his father’s family, who emigrated from the Azores, and now is learning French.
In addition to teaching history at the college, Father Orique co-directs the Latin American and Latino/a Studies Program. Among his eight books are To Heaven or to Hell: Bartolomé de Las Casas’s Confesionario (2018), the Oxford Handbook of Latin American Christianity (2020), and The Transatlantic Las Casas: Historical Trajectories, Indigenous Cultures, Scholastic Thought, and Reception in History (2022), co-edited with Rady Roldán-Figueroa, Ph.D., the Rev. Robert Randall Distinguished Professor in Christian Culture at PC during the 2023–2024 academic year.
