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The Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith

1622 · Rome (Rome, Italy)

In 1622 Gregory XV founds the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith, the Propaganda, to direct the Catholic missions worldwide under Rome rather than under the Spanish and Portuguese crowns. It trains clergy at the Urban College, prints catechisms in the languages of Asia and the Americas, and becomes the engine of the church's global expansion.

Tagged: Catholic

The Event

Date
1622 (exact)
Era
Reformation and Counter-Reformation; Standard periodization of Catholic history
Location
Rome; today Rome, Italy
Traditions
Catholicism
Streams
Catholic
Key figures
Gregory XV, Francesco Ingoli
Key texts
Inscrutabili Divinae

Primary Sources

  • Gregory XV, Inscrutabili Divinae, 1622.

Secondary Sources

  • Chadwick, Owen. A History of the Popes, 1830-1914. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998.
  • Duffy, Eamon. Saints and Sinners: A History of the Popes. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
  • Hastings, Adrian, ed. A World History of Christianity. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999.
  • MacCulloch, Diarmaid. A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. London: Penguin, 2009.
  • O'Malley, John W. Trent: What Happened at the Council. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.

Provenance: HIST-1333; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-30.

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