The Counter Reformation, sometimes known as the Catholic Reformation, took place in the 16th and early 17th centuries. It represented both an effort to push back against the Protestant Reformation and to institute internal reforms within the Roman Catholic Church. One important aspect of the Counter Reformation was an emphasis on winning new converts to the Catholic faith. For example, priests in the newly-established Jesuit order were sent as missionaries to places as far away as India, China, and Japan. Indeed, according to Brittanica.com, the Jesuits had a special responsibility for "regaining outside Europe the power and territory the Church had lost in Europe as a result of the Protestant Reformation." As it would turn out, even though he died before the Counter Reformation began, Christopher Columbus would contribute significantly to the missionary efforts of the Counter Reformation.
However, before explaining Columbus' contribution to the goals of the Counter Reformation, let us briefly examine the nature of Columbus' own religious faith. As it turns out, there is considerable controversary about Columbus' religiosity. According to a 2011 article by Joseph Kuhn of the Religion News Service, one scholar has argued that "Columbus wanted to find gold to finance a crusade to recapture Jerusalem from the Muslims, believing that Jerusalem must be in Christian hands before Jesus' Second Coming." The same scholar, Carol Delaney, presents evidence for Columbus' fervent piety in an article entitled "Columbus's Ultimate Goal: Jerusalem," which appears at the Amherst College website. On the other hand, Kuhn quotes another scholar, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, as saying that "there is no evidence that Columbus was particularly religious until...he turned to God following the failure of his worldly ambitions."
Nevertheless, regardless of how devout a Catholic Columbus himself may have been, his voyages certainly opened up new fields for Catholic missionary efforts. Previous to Columbus' time, the Americas had been essentially cut off from developments in the rest of the world, including the emergence and spread of Christianity. His journeys to the New World led ultimately to intensive colonization of the Americas by two major Catholic powers, Spain and Portugal. Thus, it is not surprising that Catholic missionaries were among the first to arrive in the Americas as they were colonized, given the opportunities for mass conversions of the indigenous peoples. True, to be fair, it can be debated as to how successful these missionary efforts were in fully converting the native peoples of North and South America (and how much they owed to the use of force). Still, what cannot be doubted is that they helped achieve one of the major goals of the Counter Reformation--to win new lands to the Catholic faith--and although he couldn't have known it, Columbus played an essential part in realizing this goal.
Image of the "Landing of Columbus" by John Vanderlyn from Wikimedia Commons