Note 28 — The Camacho Ecclesiastical Controversy, 1697–1700

The reverend archbishop, Doctor Don Diego Camacho y Avila, having arrived at Manila in the month of September in the past year of 97, undertook, in officio officiando [i.e., “in fulfilling the functions of his office”], to visit the regulars who exercise the duties of parish priests, desiring that they do so by title of law,28 subject to his jurisdiction. The said holy religious orders, having declined, on repeated occasions, to take upon themselves such a burden, making this known to the said reverend archbishop with all submission, were resolved to abandon all the Indian villages and districts [assigned to them], rather than to administer them in that manner. [They asked him], in order to preserve the tranquillity which had existed in those islands, that at least he would desist from his intention until the pope and your Majesty, being informed of the matter, should decide it: and represented to him that, taking everything into account, irreparable losses of souls would ensue from his persevering in his undertaking if the religious orders, in consequence of his violent acts, should retire [from the curacies]—since there were not secular priests to take the place of the religious in preaching and the administration of the sacraments, but it was not possible for the said reverend archbishop to yield to [even] these so serious representations, nor was he willing to wait for the decisions of [even] those so preëminent; on the contrary, he actually began the visitation. When the religious answered that now they were not parish priests, since they had resigned the Indian villages into the hands of their provincials, who had notified your vice-patron of it, the reverend archbishop took away two churches from the orders of St. Dominic and St. Augustine; and soon the commonwealth found itself in a storm, with confusion and affliction such as had never before been experienced in those islands. For within a week fifty religious who had acted as curas had retired to Manila, and orders had been given for the retirement of the others—which they would actually have done, if the courage of the reverend archbishop himself had not been taught by this experience, so costly and unnecessary, the truth of what had been often before represented to him, with so much humility and entreaty, by the religious.