Note 75 — Chapter XI · THE AUDIENCIA AND THE CHURCH: THE ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION

“In America [and in the Philippines] the monks were given a somewhat unusual position. According to the canon law they were not able to hold beneficed curacies, but the extent of the American field, and the limited number of the clergy available to occupy it, induced Leo X, Adrian VI, Paul III, Clement VIII, and Pius V to permit them to become parish priests. Under this order a very large number of these parishes in America in the first century were occupied by friars. But in the middle of the eighteenth century, this privilege was withdrawn, leaving them only two friars in a conventual province” (Moses, South America on the eve of emancipation, 138–139).