In a fallen world, faith requires constant vigilance. That was the conviction of the Franciscans at the center of David Rex Galindo's polycentric history of the colleges of Propaganda Fide. In 1683, a time of growing suspicion of the independence of the regular missionary orders in the Spanish world, the Franciscans established the first college for the propagation of faith at Querétaro, a textile center along the road to Mexico's northern mining districts. By the time that Napoleon's army invaded Spain, another 28 colleges had been founded in Mexico, South America, and Spain. Many of the most famous were established to support popular missions in the central dioceses of Spain's empire, where the halting secularization of Indian doctrinas—their transfer from religious orders to secular priests—produced a shortage of pastors. So it was that in 1785, a few years after the dramatic expulsion of Jesuit priests, Franciscans from Querétaro's college...

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