Third letter

“This city of Manila has informed your Majesty on various occasions of the great importance to these islands of the order of the discalced Recollects of the Order of St. Augustine; of the apostolic men in it; of the great harvest that they are gathering by the preaching of the holy gospel; of the excellent example which they have always given, and are giving, with their strict and religious life, and their so close observance of their rules; and of the so considerable results that have been achieved by them in the service of our Lord and in that of your Majesty, with the aid of your royal arms, in the great number of infidels who have been converted to our holy Catholic faith, and have been subdued so that they render your Majesty due homage and tribute.  Those people have generally paid that tribute and pay it every year. [We have written you] that those religious have exercised and exercise with especial care in all things the spiritual earnestness that concerns their profession, both in the maintenance or their work and in their continual desire, notwithstanding the innumerable annoyances which they endure, to carry this work onward.  They are ever converting new souls to the service of our Lord and the obedience of your Majesty, while they preserve great harmony and concord among themselves.  Consequently, that order has always been and is one of the most acceptable orders and one of the most welcome in these islands.  They are the poorest of all, as all their ministries are in remote regions very distant from this city, and among the most warlike people in all the provinces of these islands, as they have been but lately reduced. [We have told you] of the risk of their lives on account of this, because it has happened at times that those who seemed to be pacified have rebelled; while at other times the religious have fallen into the hands of those who were not pacified, when preaching to them the holy gospel.  There have been many others also who have suffered martyrdom in the kingdom of Japon, thus enriching the church of God with such noble actions, as well as the crown of your Majesty.  Above all, they have no income except the alms given them by the faithful.  There is no fleet in which they do not sail for the consolation of the infantry, etc.  This city petitions your Majesty to be pleased to concede permission to the said order, so that religious may pass from those kingdoms to these islands to the number that your Majesty may decree, in consideration of the fact that the need for them, in ministries so distant as theirs, is very great.  In those ministries, through the little nourishment of the food which they use for the sustenance of human life, for they live as those who are truly poor, and with great abstinence, which they observe, without reserving any time because of discomforts, whether of sun or shower, going through dense forests and inaccessible mountains in order to reduce the many millions of souls of those districts to our holy Catholic faith, not one of whom has any light, etc.”