Historians and social scientists concerned with African societies and cultures are well aware that the archives of Protestant and Catholic missionary groups that have worked in Africa contain valuable primary and secondary materials. In the case of Catholic missions, however, scholars are perhaps more aware of collections of documents of various congregations and orders of sisters, brothers and priests, deposited in their central archives in Rome, than they are of more local collections. There are specific historical and sociology of religion factors that determine how a particular order or congregation is organized, and especially to what extent it is responsible to the Vatican and the Papacy, and to what degree it has national and regional autonomy. With respect to official and personal documents of relevance to Africanists, there is a greater “decentralization” and dispersion of available materials than might be supposed.