Salvador Herrera Pinto was born on February 3, 1890, in the city of Abancay, to parents Rufino Herrera and Josefa Pinto. His father was a parliamentarian for Aymaraes Province under the presidencies of Andrés Avelino Cáceres and Nicolás de Piérola. He entered the Recoleta convent of Cuzco in 1902. On April 23, 1908, he made profession of vows and on May 2, 1911, he fulfilled the solemn vows of the Franciscan Order. On October 28, 1914, he was ordained as a priest in the city of Arequipa, receiving the respective Orders from Mariano Holguín[es]. He celebrated his first mass in the same city on November 8, 1914, and for his second mass he traveled to his native Abancay, where he celebrated it on January 17, 1915.[1]
In his capacity as Bishop of Puno, he was Secretary General of the Episcopal Conference of Peru from 1934 to 1935 and from 1935 to 1936. In 1935 he was a prominent participant in the First National Eucharistic Congress held in the city of Lima.
He was a notable polyglot, knowledgeable in both classical (Greek, Hebrew and Latin), modern (English, French, Italian, German) and Andean (Quechua, Aymara) languages, the latter of which he learned since his childhood in Quechua-speaking Apurímac.
In 1953 he was appointed president of the Committee for the Pontifical Coronation of the Virgin of the Miracle in Lima, a coronation that was carried out by the Apostolic Nuncio Monsignor Fernando Cento at the request of Pope Pius XII.[3]
In 1966, he wrote La Cuna de Ricardo Palma, a book that questions the veracity of the claim that Ricardo Palma was born in Lima, instead naming the town of Talavera de la Reyna as his birthplace.[4]
