They also learned how to work the social and religious systems that incorporated them. Religious transformation was the key to the Whittens' new liberties, for it was upon thier claim to want conversion that all other rights rested. It is difficult to overestimate the significance of the Roman Catholic Church as a vehicle for African assimilation in terms of social acceptance and advancement in Spanish communities. In a sense it was the one true equalizer, for within the church all were "brothers in Christ." The Catholic Church had incorporated Africans centuries before Spain's expansion into the Americas, and although the Catholic evangelization effort among Africans in the Americas may have appeared minimal compared to that among Native Americans, the Catholic Church did welcome and encourage black converts. It is not surprising that newly freed men and women conditioned to a chattel slave system that limited their access to Protestant church membership would seize the opportunity to have themselves and their children baptized in St. Augustine's Catholic Church. The corporate structure of the Catholic Church had important cultural implications for both free and enslaved Africans, offering them affiliation, brotherhood, protection, and satus. Prince and Judy Whitten joined other refugees in seeking church membership for their children even before officially registering with government authorities. At about age nine, Glasgow became Francisco Domingo Mariano Witten, and seven-year-old Polly became Maria Rafaela Witten. Done properly, it took more time and effort to convert adults, and Prince and Judy could not be baptized until they had successfully passed the priest's examination on the basic tenets of the church. (Landers note: One eighteenth-century Cuban example of this doctrina exam consisted of twenty-six questions with set answers on the nature of the Trinity, creation, immaculate conception, Christ's death and resurrection, sin, confession, and salvation. Doctrina Para Negros, trans. and ed. Javier Lavina, Barcelona, 1989) Language impediments must surely have slowed the process, but four years after the baptisms of their children Prince and Judy also entered the Catholic Church, taking the baptismal names Juan Bautista Whitten and Maria Rafaela Quenty. [Painting: Christian baptism of an African in thirteenth-century Spain] Baptism into the Catholic faith served several important functions for black converts. Most imporant in the view of the priests was the religious function of removing the stigma of original sin and bringing the baptized into the brotherhood of the church. Perhaps equally imporant for black converts, however, was the social function of establishing an extended kin network between the baptized and his or her godparents, and between the parents and godparents, who thus became compadres. A prominent Spaniard, don Manuel Fernandez Bendicho, who was also by then their next-door neighbor, served as Prince and Judy's godfather at their baptism. (Landers note: Godparents typically gave gifts at the baptism and were expected to provide for the spiritual and material care of their god-"child" in the event of the parents' death, but more imporant were the ties that boudn the membes of the newly-linked "family." Such extended kinship may have had even stronger signicance for adult converts, manyof whom were uprooted and kinless (bozales (recently arrived and unacculturated Africans). Joseph Miller argues that Africans understaood Christianity as a form of healing, as well as of social integraton.) With Fernandez Bendicho standing beside the couple in the church in a public act of patronage, the family's social ascent had begun. The new Catholics Prince and Judy Whitten soon became among the most popular godparents in the black community of St. Augustine: Prince sponsored twenty-three individuals, while Judy served as godmother for thirty-one persons. Acquring so many "dependents" enhanced the Whittens' status in the Catholic community and reinforced their respectability. (Landers: Atlantic Creoles)