JUST as I admitted last week that I love sidewalks, now I have to admit that when I first arrived in the Philippines, I had no idea what a religious order was. I didn't know the difference between secular and regular priests, and I didn't know what the difference was between a Franciscan, a Dominican or a Jesuit. I knew absolutely nothing about their histories or their members. But worst of all, I not only didn't know, I didn't want to know either. Like so many other Spaniards of my generation and despite my parents being Catholic, we have been raised to be suspicious of the Catholic Church as an institution, so I was predisposed to believe anything negative I was told about its members.

But I like books, and I especially like very old books, so I began to investigate the history of the printing press and the Spanish period of this archipelago. Consequently, inevitably, I was forced to start reading things about friars and familiarize myself with their activities. And then my prejudices gradually fell away, and I began to take an interest in some friars in a way that I had not done before: as people of flesh and blood, with their virtues and their weaknesses, who left absolutely everything in their country of origin — their families, their friends, their beloved routinary convent life — for a faith and for other people whom they did not know at all.

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