Catholics have lived in Jamaica since Christopher Columbus weighed anchor off the island’s north coast in 1494. Jamaica was seized from Spain by Oliver Cromwell in 1655, as part of his great “Western Design”, intended to halt the spread of Catholicism in the Hispanic New World.
The loss of the Caribbean outpost was a disaster for Spain: Britain could now inflict piratical raids on Catholic territories along the Panama trade route to Europe and thus rival Spain’s King Philip IV as a force for imperial power and plunder. Only 50,000 Catholics remain in Jamaica today – about two per cent of the population – but they are a distinguished presence.
