Dominicans in the Caribbean

Missionary Activity
Another form of Dominican preaching has been its missionary activity. As we know, St. Dominic yearned to be a missionary to the Cuman Tatars who were out where the border of Russia would be today. At that time, Eastern Europe and on clear over to the Pacific Ocean was inhabited by barbarian tribes that kept pushing one another by invasion so that the situation was always chaotic. But it was a great field for missionary activity. St. Dominic's desire to a certain extent was partially realized when he received the Polish brothers, St. Hyacinth and Blessed Celaus, into the Order. Poland was on the frontier of the Faith, not completely Christianized itself but it would become a base of operations for further missionary work to the north and the east.

Blessed Jordan of Saxony, Dominic's successor, would set up the Province of the Holy Land as well as the Province of Greece. There was also the extraordinary group called the Pilgrim Friars which was a vicariate of the Order that sent Dominicans out into that vast region of Central Asia. Records have been lost so we know little about the details of the works done by these itinerant Friars. This all came to an end in 1453 when the Turks captured Constantinope and became the masters of the Near East.

In 1492, Columbus opened up a whole new mission field in the New World. Dominicans, especially the Spanish, poured into it to bring the Good News to the natives. Their biggest enemies were their own countrymen. Bartolome de las Casas was the most eloquent and powerful voice for the Indians. Another great Dominican missionary was St. Louis Bertrand who converted tens of thousands of Indians. But there were innumerable other Dominicans working in these missions. We must mention just in passing the Dominican missions in Baja California.

The Portuguese had already opened up the Far East to missionary activity and Dominicans were there from the beginning. The Province of the Holy Rosary was founded in Spain to man these missions. The proto-martyrs of Vietnam, China, Japan and Formosa were members of that Province. They also founded the largest Catholic University in the world in Manila, Santo Tomas.

Unfortunately we do not have time to go into the missionary activity of the Order in detail but it is glorious and we can be proud of it. Father Francis Weber, the eminient historian of the Church in the western United States, sums up very well our missionary work in the Americas:

Since its founding in 1215 by Domingo de Guzman, the Order of Prachers has diligently sought to make the world its cell and the ocean its cloister. Entering the New World in 1510, the Dominicans, as they are known, settled on Espaniola, a small island in the Caribbean Sea, to begin an unparalled humanitarian campaign on behalf of the region's native peoples. Pedro de Cordova, Antonio de Montesimos, Bartolome de Las Casas and Luis Cancer are only a few who threw themselves wholeheartedly into the task of advancing the spiritual and material welfare of the Indian population.

In practically every corner of the two American continents penetrated by Spain, the Order of Preachers labored with distinction. As early as 1526, they moved from the Caribbean islands to preach the Gospel within the present borders of the continental United States, possibly with Ponce de Leon in 1513 and assuredly with Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon in 1526.