[6] Following the 1769 Suppression of the Jesuits, which was motivated by both Caesaropapism and certain other anti-religious currents behind the Bourbon Reforms and the Enlightenment in Spain, Geddes engaged in secret and delicate negotiations at the Spanish court with Don Pedro Rodriguez de Campomanes.

Geddes sought permission for the reopening and revival of the former Royal Scots College at Madrid, which had been confiscated from the Society of Jesus and closed down since 1734, as a major seminary for training Scottish secular clergy.

[7] In 1771, Geddes and fifteen seminarians, including seven native speakers of the Scottish Gaelic language from Lochaber and South Uist, revived the college on the outskirts of Valladolid, in Northern Spain.

Geddes also forwarded to Scotland a letter from Campomanes, praising Bishop George Hay, the Vicar Apostolic of the Lowland District, for his humane actions, even during the arson that burned down his chapel and residence in Edinburgh.

In a subtle allusion to his poems Holy Willie's Prayer, Address to the Devil, and other similar ones, Burns wrote to another correspondent, "I have outraged that gloomy, fiery Presbyterianism enough already, though I don't spit in her lugubrious face by telling her that the first [that is, finest] cleric character I ever saw was a Roman Catholick - a Popish bishop, Geddes.

"[17] In December 1790, Geddes wrote to Hay, who felt an intense hatred for the anti-religious laws of the First French Republic, that Burke's Reflections of the Revolution in France was selling very well in Edinburgh and predicted the same book, "will do much good in the present crisis".