<P> Nevertheless, Amerindian populations suffered serious decline due to new diseases, inadvertently introduced through contact with Europeans, which created a labor vacuum in the New World . </P> <P> In 1522, the first Franciscan missionaries arrived in Mexico, establishing schools, model farms and hospitals . When some Europeans questioned whether the Indians were truly human and worthy of baptism, Pope Paul III in the 1537 bull Sublimis Deus confirmed that "their souls were as immortal as those of Europeans" and they should neither be robbed nor turned into slaves . Over the next 150 years, missions expanded into southwestern North America . Native people were often legally defined as children, and priests took on a paternalistic role, sometimes enforced with corporal punishment . </P> <P> Junípero Serra, the Franciscan priest in charge of this effort, founded a series of missions which became important economic, political, and religious institutions . These missions brought grain, cattle and a new way of living to the Indian tribes of California . Overland routes were established from New Mexico that resulted in the colonization of San Francisco in 1776 and Los Angeles in 1781 . However, by bringing Western civilization to the area, these missions and the Spanish government have been held responsible for wiping out nearly a third of the native population, primarily through disease . </P> <P> Only in the 19th century, after the breakdown of most Spanish and Portuguese colonies, was the Vatican able to take charge of Catholic missionary activities through its Propaganda Fide organization . In a challenge to Spanish and Portuguese policy, Pope Gregory XVI, began to appoint his own candidates as bishops in the colonies, condemned slavery and the slave trade in the 1839 papal bull In supremo apostolatus, and approved the ordination of native clergy in the face of government racism . Yet in spite of these advances, the Amerindian population continued to suffer decline from exposure to European diseases . </P>

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