After his ordination by the bishop of Michoacán in 1700, Juan Antonio Pérez de Espinosa walked from Valladolid to Querétaro, his native city, there to celebrate his first mass. He was accompanied by his younger brother, then but a subdeacon, Fray Isidro Félix de Espinosa, who in El familiar de la América y doméstico de España, a life of his brother written fifty years later, fondly recalled how the secular priest had dismounted from his horse so as to make the journey together on foot. Of reduced but still comfortable means, their parents had raised six children to maturity, of whom the three brothers became priests, and one sister a nun. Educated by the Jesuits in Querétaro, Juan Antonio later studied at the University in Mexico City, residing at the newly founded Oratory, both his education and ordination made possible by Juan Antonio Caballero y Ocio, a wealthy priest and benefactor in Querétaro, who provided him with a chantry endowment sufficient to sustain him. Greatly influenced by Fray Antonio Margil and the college of Santa Cruz, Espinosa joined the Franciscans in preaching on the streets and in the textile workshops of Querétaro, and later accompanied Margil on his mission to Valladolid and Pátzcuaro. But if he entered the Third Order of the Franciscans, he was more attracted by the Oratory and with this aim in mind joined the Congregation of Our Lady of Guadalupe, an association of secular priests which possessed its own church, built with funds offered by Caballero.