1490s-1700s · Mexico City, Mexico
Catholic Missions to the Americas
Spanish and Portuguese missionaries baptized millions across the Americas, building churches and schools alongside conquistadors who enslaved and killed the people they were trying to save.
Beginning in the late 1490s and accelerating through the 1500s, Catholic missionaries accompanied — and sometimes challenged — the European conquest of the Americas. Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, and later Jesuits established missions from Mexico to Paraguay, from California to Brazil. The results were as complicated as any chapter in Church history. On one hand, missionaries like Bartolome de Las Casas fought ferociously against the abuse of indigenous peoples. Las Casas, a Dominican friar, wrote devastating accounts of Spanish atrocities and argued before the Spanish king that Native Americans had full human dignity and rights. His advocacy led to the New Laws of 1542, which attempted to end the worst abuses of the encomienda system of forced labor. On the other hand, missionaries participated in the destruction of indigenous cultures, religions, and languages. They burned codices, tore down temples, and imposed European Christianity in ways that left deep scars. The Jesuit reductions in Paraguay were arguably the most humane model — self-governing communities where Guarani people maintained their language and some cultural practices while embracing Catholicism. But even these were ultimately destroyed when the Jesuits were expelled from the Americas in 1767. The legacy is inescapable. Latin America is the largest Catholic region in the world today, with roughly 40 percent of all Catholics. That is partly because missionaries brought the Gospel and partly because colonial power left little alternative. The faith that took root was often a genuine fusion of Catholic and indigenous spirituality — Our Lady of Guadalupe is the most famous example — but it grew in soil that was soaked in conquest. The Church cannot celebrate the fruit without acknowledging the poisoned ground.
Why it matters
Created the largest Catholic population in the world while entangling the faith inextricably with European colonialism, producing a legacy the Church is still trying to honestly reckon with.
What Happened
Catholic religious orders arrived in the Americas alongside conquistadors beginning in the 1490s. They established thousands of missions, baptized millions, and built churches, schools, and hospitals. Some missionaries, particularly Bartolome de Las Casas, fought against the enslavement and abuse of indigenous peoples. Others participated in cultural destruction, burning indigenous texts and demolishing temples. The Jesuit reductions in Paraguay created a more humane model of missionary work but were ultimately disbanded. By the 1700s, the Americas had been transformed into the most Catholic region on earth.
Why It Still Matters
Latin America is home to about 40 percent of the world's Catholics. That reality is inseparable from colonialism. The Church brought literacy, hospitals, and the Gospel; it also participated in the destruction of entire civilizations. Figures like Las Casas show that prophetic voices existed within the Church even at the worst moments, but they were often ignored. Pope Francis, the first pope from the Americas, has acknowledged these wounds. The challenge for the modern Church is to honor the genuine faith of Latin American Catholics while being honest about how that faith arrived.