"We give praise to God for our achievement (in reaching India) and for the information that there are in these countries Christian people. It will be our principal object to speak to you of these latter and to profit, whilst also maintaining the love and fraternity which ought to prevail among Christian kings. For we believe that God, Our Lord, did not permit this great achievement of our navy only to serve our temporal interests, but also to strive for the spiritual betterment of souls and their salvation. It pleased God to bequeath both to you and to us the same Christian faith by which the whole world was united for six hundred years after the birth of Christ, until at last by the sins of mankind, there came certain sects and creeds contrary to the primitive religion of Christ, which sects had to come for the justification of the good and on account of the deceit of the wicked. These merited condemnation and loss, because they did not desire to receive the truth to be saved. Wherefore God warned them of what they should know and understand. For doing wrong and acquiescing in falsehoods they were condemned. These sects occupied the greater part of the land between your country and ours – which impeded communication between us. This communication is now opened afresh by our navigation, and thereby God, to whom nothing is impossible, has cleared an obstacle. Wherefore knowing that the hand of God is manifest in all this and desiring to serve Him by carrying out His will, we are now sending you our captain, ships, and merchandise, besides a factor who, if it is your pleasure, will remain there to carry out his duties. We are also sending some religious versed in the teachings of Christ, and ecclesiastical ornaments for celebrating the divine office and administering the sacraments. These religious will enable you to know the doctrines of the Christian faith, instituted by Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and as imparted to the twelve apostles, His disciples. After His holy resurrection these apostles preached this faith everywhere and it was received by the whole world. Two of them, St. Thomas and St. Bartholomew, preached in your parts of India, working many and stupendous miracles and attracting the people away from unbelief and idolatry – in which ere this the whole world was steeped, and converted them to the truth of the holy Christian creed. One of these apostles, St. Peter, was ordered by Our Lord, Jesus Christ, to be His chief vicar. Preaching in the city of Rome, then the centre of idolatry, he suffered martyrdom for Him, and lies buried there. From that time onwards this city has been the seat of the head of the faith of Christ by His command through the successors of St. Peter, the Holy Fathers. The Lord God wished that just as in former times Rome was the mother of error and falsehood, she should now be and continue for ever more to be the mother of truth."