Born in Madrid in 1596, he began his ecclesiastical career in his youth, entering the Order of Santa Maria della Mercede, for which he was a missionary in South America and these were the years when he wrote some famous historical memories, the Historia verdadera de the conquest of La Nueva España.
Having moved to Italy following the court of Philip IV of Spain, he worked extensively in Milan, where he was widely seen by the political circles of the time as openly pro-Spanish. For this reason, on March 9, 1654, he was nominated bishop of Vigevano, which at the time represented one of the border dioceses of the Milanese Duchy and as such one of the most sensitive even under the aspect of the political management of the territory.
Subsequently, on 24 September 1657, he was appointed archbishop and was entrusted with the care of the archdiocese of Otranto, where he moved and where he remained until his death in 1674.
He lived in Galatina in the ducal palace of the noble Spinola family and emulating the bishop of Lecce, Luigi Pappacoda was a patron of the arts commissioning in 1670 the church of the Madonna della Luce and embellishing and completing the façade of the master church.