opled
by Indians who were almost all apostates from religion, has now in
great part embraced the faith through the efforts of the religious,
who scarcely ten years ago founded a new village peopled by families
of the said Indians. It is not many years since the wild Indians
[Zimarrones] were feared in the island of Masbate but these are now so
few, through the persuasions of the religious, that one can cross the
island without danger. The villages have increased greatly with the
people who have been reduced to a Christian life and civilization. The
village of Camasoso is a new colony peopled by that before indomitable
people; and the same has happened in the island of Burias. Now then,
I ask, since this is so (and it is a fact, and one that can be proved
whenever necessary), in what are these ministries or curacies different
from those in Nueva Espana and Peru, when St. Pius V conceded the
exemption of the regulars? What difference is there between those
missions or parishes and those founded in the Philipinas Islands
when they began to be subject to the crown of Espana? There appears
to be no difference. If the privilege conceded to the religious in
America with those circumstances was considered justifiable, and was
also observed in the said islands at the beginning, our discalced
religious will proceed quite conformably with right in resisting any
change with all their strength, as long as their individual parish
priests are also, as stated, engaged as missionaries.

740. More force is given to this argument if one considers that,
even in carrying on missions in infidel lands, our religious could
not suffer greater hardships than those which they endure in the
said ministries. That it may be seen that this is not imagination,
I shall give a rough outline of what happened recently from the
year 1720 until the present. I shall do it as briefly as possible,
for those regrettable tragedies will occasion great extension to this
history in due time. It is well known that our villages are the most
exposed to the invasions of the Moros; consequently, they always
serve as the theater of war and as the object of disasters. In the
said year, then, they attacked the province of Calamianes with a
powerful fleet. Landing on the island of Linacapan they burned the
village, convent, and church; outraged the sacred images; and killed
with lance-thrusts the venerable father, Fray Manuel de Jesus Maria,
a native of Lupiana in Alcarria