Alonso de Molina was a Franciscan

Franciscan

Most Franciscans are members of Roman Catholic religious orders founded by Saint Francis of Assisi. Besides Roman Catholic communities, there are also Old Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, ecumenical and Non-denominational Franciscan communities....

 priest and grammarian, who wrote a well-known dictionary of the Nahuatl language published in 1571.

He was born in Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

 but arrived in Mexico while still a child and he became fluent in Nahuatl while playing with Aztec

Aztec

The Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, a period referred to as the late post-classic period in Mesoamerican chronology.Aztec is the...

 children. Molina arrived in Mexico immediately following Cortes' invasion. As a young man he entered the Franciscan order and became ordained as a priest. He taught at the Colegio de Santa Cruz

Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco

The Real Colegio de Santa Cruz in Tlatelolco, Mexico, was the first European school of higher learning in the Americas. The school was built by the Franciscan order on the initiative of Viceroy Antonio de Mendoza and Bishop Juan de Zumárraga on the site of an Aztec school, for the children of nobles...

 in Tlatelolco

Tlatelolco (Mexico City)

Tlatelolco is an area in the Cuauhtémoc borough of Mexico City, centered on the Plaza de las Tres Culturas, a square surrounded on three sides by an excavated Aztec archaeological site, a 17th century church called Templo de Santiago, a former convent, and office complexes that used to belong to...

 along with Bernardino de Sahagún

Bernardino de Sahagún

Bernardino de Sahagún was a Franciscan friar, missionary priest and pioneering ethnographer who participated in the Catholic evangelization of colonial New Spain . Born in Sahagún, Spain, in 1499, he journeyed to New Spain in 1529, and spent more than 50 years conducting interviews regarding Aztec...

 and Andrés de Olmos

Andrés de Olmos

Andrés de Olmos , Franciscan priest and extraordinary grammarian and ethno-historian of Mexico's Indians, was born in Oña, Burgos, Spain, and died in Tampico in New Spain...

. Besides his priestly duties, Molina devoted himself to the study, understanding and writing of Nahuatl. He composed and preached many sermons in the Nahuatl tongue.

Molina's Vocabulary in Castilian and Mexican language which he composed between 1555 and 1571 was the first dictionary printed in the New World

New World

The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...

, and, together with Olmos’ work, was the first published systematic approach to an indigenous language. It is still considered an indispensable tool for students of Classical Nahuatl

Classical Nahuatl

Classical Nahuatl is a term used to describe the variants of the Nahuatl language that were spoken in the Valley of Mexico — and central Mexico as a lingua franca — at the time of the 16th-century Spanish conquest of Mexico...

 language.

Molina was named a saint in the early 1600s, he is not highly known. But he is revered in his lifelong devotion to the church and by translating the bible to the native language.
Molina has decedents traced to Guatemala, Mexico City, and even the United States.

Works

• Doctrina christiana breve traduzida en lengua mexicana (1547)
• Aquí comiença un vocabulario en la lengua castellana y mexicana
  Aqui comienca un vocabulario en la lengua castellana y mexicana
  Aquí comiença un vocabulario en la lengua castellana y mexicana is a Spanish-to-Nahuatl dictionary by Alonso de Molina published in 1555. It was the first dictionary to be published in the New World, and was a forerunner to Molina's significant Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana of...
  
  (1555)
• Confessionario breve, en lengua mexicana (1563/64?)
• Confessionario mayor, en lengua mexicana y castellana (1565)
• Arte de la lengua mexicana y castellana
  Arte de la lengua mexicana y castellana
  The Arte de la lengua mexicana y castellana is a grammar of the Nahuatl language in Spanish by Alonso de Molina. It was published in Mexico in 1571, the same year as his monumental dictionary, Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana....
  
  (1571)
• Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana
  Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana
  Vocabulario en lengua castellana y mexicana is a bilingual dictionary of Spanish and Nahuatl by Alonso de Molina, first published in 1571. It has approximately 23,600 entries, and grew out of his earlier dictionary, Aqui comienca un vocabulario en la lengua castellana y mexicana, which had only...
  
  (1571)