What an intriguing title…kind of misleading though. It’s not about the archbishop’s death until the very last chapter; for the majority he is very much alive and busy building up the church in Santa Fe, New Mexico for around 40 years, starting in the 1850s or so. Father Latour and Father Vallant are friends from France who join the missionary corps. After a few years in Ohio, they are given the more daunting task of ministering to the long-abandoned flock in New Mexico. Some places have been without official church support for two centuries.
The book isn’t really a cohesive record of their entire time there; rather it reads like a selection of the most notable incidents they encountered. A few that stuck out to me:
- The fathers are inviting in to an isolated farmhouse off in the middle of nowhere. Their host seems a bit sketchy. When she has them alone, his Mexican wife warns them to flee. They do (and she does too later), and they find out the man has killed and robbed many travelers in the past.
- A priest sets up a personal fiefdom atop a mesa among Indians. He lives like a king in his palace. But one day his anger gets the better of him and he kills a servant. The others rise up and throw him off the mesa.
- Father Latour is taken into a secret shrine for shelter in a storm by his Indian guide. Deep in the cavern is a crack through which a giant underground river can be heard. Understandably other-worldly enough to attribute to primeval gods!
- Father Vallant is eventually sent to minister to miners in the new settlements around Denver.
Very good writing, even without much plot.
uniformly uninformative 