Three years of unsuccessful study at a Jesuit college led him to abandon this idea and, after holding the position of sacristan for a while in a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary, he rented a house in a suburb of the city called Calvary, and there taught reading and catechism to poor children.

During a novena of preparation for the Feast of the Purification, the Bethlehemites, with arms extended in the form of a cross, recited the rosary in their chapel at midnight in the midst of a great throng.

Brother Anthony, who assumed the government, drew up constitutions which he submitted to the bishop of the diocese for approval and it was at this juncture that the Capuchins requested him to make some alterations in the habit worn by his religious.

Doctor Antoine d'Arvila gave them the Hospital of Notre Dame du Carmel which he was then establishing at Lima (in Peru) and afterwards solicited admission among them.

After his return to the Americas this religious founded the Hospital of St. Francis Xavier in Mexico and those of Chachapoyas, Cajamarca and Trujillo, going back to Spain in 1681 to secure the confirmation of these new institutions.

The Spanish court did not approve this plan and at first the Holy See was not favourable to it, but due chiefly to the influence of Cardinal Mellini, former nuncio at Madrid, Roderick of the Cross at length overcame all difficulties and in the Papal Bull of 26 March 1687, Pope Innocent XI authorized these religious to make the three solemn vows according to the rule of St. Augustine[4][5][3] (although Peter of Saint Joseph Betancur was a Franciscan) and to have a Prior General, and granted them all the privileges of the Augustinian friars and convents.

[3] Later, Pope Clement XI renewed this authorization and these favours, adding thereunto the privileges of the mendicant orders, of the Regular Clerks, of the Ministers of the Sick and of the Hospitallers of Charity of St. Hippolytus (1707).

[3] In 1688 Brother Anthony of the Cross, with the help of a pious woman, Marie Anne del Gualdo, founded at Guatemala a community of Bethlehemite nuns and a hospital exclusively for women.

[3] Later in the 19th century, Encarnación Rosal [es] (1815-1886) revived the female branch of the order, establishing houses in Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Ecuador.

[6] The Holy See restored the Bethlehem Brothers by a decree of 16 January 1984, which came into effect with the religious profession of the first members of the revived order on 25 April 1986.