Franciscan Spirituality and Mission in New Spain, 1524-1599

Franciscans in sixteenth-century New Spain were deeply ambivalent about their mission work. Fray Juan de Zumárraga, the first archbishop of Mexico, begged the king to find someone else to do his job so that he could go home. Fray Juan de Ribas, one of the original twelve ''apostles of Mexico'' and a founding pillar of the church in New Spain, later fled with eleven other friars into the wildernes...