PIOUS FUND

Originally associated with the Jesuit mission field of Lower California, the pious fund opened in 1697. The Spanish crown permitted the venture on condition that it should not be supported out of the royal treasury. As a result, throughout the 18th century various benefactors offered gifts of money and land for the new missions.

These contributions were used as capital, the interest of which supported the apostolic undertaking. Eventually the Jesuits became administrators of the holdings, known as the Pious Fund of the Californias. Upon the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spanish dominions in 1767, the crown assumed management of the fund to support the Dominican missions in Lower California and those of the Franciscans in the new field of Upper California. After the Mexican Revolution, the fund was administered by the new government, which offered the income to support a bishop in California. In 1842, however, the Mexican government withdrew this offer, sold the fund's holdings, and placed the entire capital into the national treasury, acknowledging an annual indebtedness of six percent for religious purposes in California. After Upper California was annexed to the U.S., no payments were made until a protest was lodged before a joint commission by the bishops of the new state. In 1875 the umpire, Sir Edward Thornton, decided for the claimants and ordered back payments to be made. Mexico paid the past accrued interest, but gave nothing for the period following the decision. Protest was made again in 1902 before the Hague Tribunal, which ruled that Mexico should pay to the U.S., for the Church in California, both the delinquent interest on the fund and a perpetual annuity, in the future, of $43,050.99. Mexico paid this for a time but defaulted in 1913. In 1967, Mexico's Pious Fund debt was settled with a one-time payment of $719,546 to the archdioceses of San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Bibliography: j. a. berger, The Franciscan Missions of California (Garden City, N.Y. 1948). U.S. Senate, 57th Cong., 2d sess., United States vs. Mexico. Report of Jackson H. Ralston, Agent of United States and of Counsel in the Matter of Pious Fund of the Californias before Permanent Court of Arbitration, The Hague, Sept. 15–Oct. 14, 1902 (Washington 1902).

[e. d. burnett/eds.]