Volume 37 — CHAPTER XLI
Reading edition
A new mission arrives in the province; and events of these times in Filipinas and China.
“Fray Juan Bautista de Marinis, master of the order.”
This is the letter written ex-officio by the general of the order to a poor missionary under him, giving place to this care before so many and imperative cares as claim his attention—so that one may see even in this life the honors that God has prepared for those who are employed in so apostolic an occupation.
In those two years God took from us valuable associates of long experience, who served this holy province much by their example and work for the welfare of the Indians. Father Fray Juan de Arjona, son of the convent of San Pablo el Real in Cordova, [was one]. He had been occupied with great earnestness in the ministries of Pangasinan and Ytui, and there he performed great deeds for the service of God, as those ministries were new. He died at an advanced age in the convent of Santo Domingo in Manila. Father Fray Juan Pabon, native of Montaruches in Estremadura, son of the convent at Truxillo in the province of España, was most accomplished in the language of Nueva Segovia, and suffered great hardships in the conversion of the Indians of Irraya and in the administration of other villages. The love and respect of all who came in contact with him was very great; and the province entrusted to him many posts of honor, and grieved not a little at his death, for he was a model for ministers, and in every respect a pattern of his obligation.