When the records you will be reading were kept, Latin America and Spain were almost 100 percent Catholic. Of all the records mentioned on this site, Catholic records are the most important for family historians and genealogists with Hispanic ancestry. Beginning in the sixteenth century, the Catholic Church required that each of its parishes keep records of the sacraments, baptisms (christenings), and marriages performed in the parish. The church also prescribed the form in which these records, or parish registers, were to be kept. During the nineteenth century, as individual nations adopted Civil Registration Laws, they also prescribed the form and content of those records of births, marriages, and deaths.