The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803; explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commericial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the beginning of the nineteenth century; [Vol. 1, no. 36]

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THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

[Vol. 36

(the stipends not being received in proportion to the
number of the religious but in proportion to the
tributes), that they have to maintain three and sometimes four religious with what the king assigns for
one minister. It is endured with the greatest kind of
poverty, and they even lack the necessities for the
maintenance of life.
743. I suppose also that, when once the new form
of administration would be established according to
the subjection that is claimed, it would follow that
each ministry would have a prior appointed in the
chapters, and a cura assigned by the ordinary with
canonical institution. For this is the observance in
America, in order to save the freedom of the elections in what concerns the regular superiors, and in
order to prevent the religious who are curas from
being free from the vow of obedience. Of these, the
parish priest cares for the administration, the prior
looks after matters pertaining to the regular estate
but cannot assist in what pertains to the instruction
[doctrinal, for generally he does not know the language. The former has increased expenses with the
visit of the bishop and other matters relating thereto;
and the latter, with the journeys to the chapter and
the visitation of the provincial; and all these expenses
must be paid by the stipends of the mission, for there
is no other source of income. Consequently, it is inferred that it would be necessary in this case, to
reduce the ministries to a new form and assign one
single cura to each five hundred tributes. It would
be doing well if the product of those tributes sufficed
for the maintenance of the two religious, prior and
parish priest, with the other unavoidable and necessary expenses. But if at present two priests scarcely