He was born at Chimpay, a small town in Valle Medio, Río Negro Province, Argentina,[1] the sixth child of Rosario Burgos and a Mapuche cacique, Manuel Namuncurá.

His father Manuel, Chief of the Mapuches, promoted to honorary colonel in the Argentine army, decided that his son would study in Buenos Aires to prepare himself "to be useful to his people.

[3] From April 2, 1901, Carlos Gardel, afterward a legendary tango singer and film actor, became a student at the academy and sang along with Ceferino in the chorus.

Pope Pius X received them in September, after which Namuncurá moved to Turin and later to the Salesian College "Villa Sora" in Frascati, to continue his education.

[5] Between May 13 and July 10, 1947, the church officially started the process for Canonization of Ceferino Namuncurá, with 21 then-living witnesses deposing evidence in favor of his virtues.

On June 22, 1972, Pope Paul VI promulgated the Decree of Heroism of His Virtues, and Ceferino was thus proclaimed venerable, becoming the first Catholic Argentine to receive that title and the first South American aborigine.

In 2000 a committee of Vatican pathologists declared that the healing of the uterine cancer of a young mother, Valeria Herrera from Córdoba, Argentina, could not be explained medically, with which it was left to church authorities to decree that it was a miracle due to the intercession of Ceferino Namuncurá.

Manuel Gálvez, the Argentine novelist and biographer, wrote a biography of Ceferino Namuncurá in 1947: El Santito de la Toldería.

[5] In Cebu, Philippines, students of Don Bosco Technology Center staged a play entitled Zephyrin: The Musicale on March 14, 15, and 16, 2008, at SM Cinema One in Cebu City, Philippines, written by Jude Gitamondoc and directed by Daisy Brilliantes Ba-ad with the help of Don Bosco Technology Center Productions.