Why Columbus?

Mass was celebrated for the first time in the New World  in La Isabela (now Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic) for the Feast of the Epiphany (January 6, 1494) by Fr. Bernardo Boil, the Franciscan apostolic delegate and 12 additional priests who sailed with Christopher Columbus on his second voyage. As Pope Francis wrote to Cardinal Chavez on the 525th anniversary in 2019, this was "the beginning of the presence of Christ in His Body and in His Blood, His Soul and His Divinity on the American continent.”

For Columbus is ours; since if a little consideration be given to the particular reason of his design in exploring the mare tenebrosum, and also the manner in which he endeavoured to execute the design, it is indubitable that the Catholic faith was the strongest motive for the inception and prosecution of the design; so that for this reason also the whole human race owes not a little to the Church

We decree, therefore, that on October 12, or on the following Sunday, if the Ordinary should prefer it, in all the Cathedral churches and convent chapels throughout Spain, Italy, and the two Americas, after the office of the day there shall be celebrated a Solemn Mass of the Most Holy Trinity…  
– Pope Leo XIII, Quarto Abeunte Saeculo, 1892