To see intricate Baroque Spanish architecture, tourists travel to Mexico, Spain, Portugal and across South America. Or you can visit Tucson, Arizona, to tour San Xavier del Bac Mission church, the lovingly restored cathedral in the desert.
One of the oldest churches in the American Southwest, San Xavier del Bac is especially resplendent in winter as cumulus clouds cross the sky and the polarized, low-angle light reveals every aspect of the cathedral’s graceful exterior. Inside, the living church has murals, carved wooden saints, ancient doors, handwrought brass hinges, 183 angels, and a silence as parishioners and visitors kneel and pray facing the altar, adorned for Christmas and again for Easter.
The center of religious life for the Tohono O’odham tribe, the church’s west tower has a striking white cupola and dome while the east tower remains unfinished with an open cupola and no dome, creating an asymmetrical appearance. Called “The White Dove of the Desert,” the church seems to float and rise above the surrounding landscape. From a distance it appears to be a mirage. The structure exists as a testament to Spanish Colonial faith at “the ragged edge of Christendom.” Restoration architect Bob Vint said, “If we think of architecture as a built expression of a given culture or set of beliefs, then the mission is a perfect manifestation of Spanish Catholicism in the late 18th century.”
San Xavier del Bac has two stories – the story of its creation, construction and endurance, and the story of its conservation and preservation. The first story begins with the peripatetic Father Eusebio Francisco Kino, a devout Jesuit priest who founded two dozen churches when no border existed between Mexico and Arizona. It was one intact cultural region, and he traveled for 24 years and one day across the vast, dry, Primera Alta. San Xavier Mission began in 1692, and though Father Kino preached Christianity, he also accepted Native beliefs, unlike other members of his religious order.
Kino came and went, continually on the move, but he helped supply vital cattle, sheep, goats and other sources of food for a thriving rancheria with fields irrigated from the Santa Maria River. Subsequent priests were not as tolerant, and as more Europeans moved through southern Arizona, diseases spread. In 1734, angry Natives broke into the padre’s house stealing vestments and Catholic icons. Other priests again came and went. Award-winning historian John Kessell cites a visitor who noted, “It is a well-populated mission ... not at all amenable to the subjection of the gentle yoke of Christ. They are Christians more in name than reality.”
Bernard L. Fontana writes the complicated history of the mission in San Xavier Del Bac: “Portrait of a Desert Church,” published by the Southwest Mission Research Center. With historic drawings, paintings, photographs and computer simulations, Fontana shows how the church evolved from a long, narrow, mud adobe structure built by Jesuit Pastor Alonso Espinosa to the magnificent cathedral existing today. Part of the church’s history includes expulsion of the Jesuits after 75 years, and the more careful work of the Franciscans who came next constructing “San Xavier’s second church – the far larger and more intricate Franciscan church.”
Of the many intriguing aspects of the church are unfinished areas such as a painting on the east wall of the choir loft, incomplete murals, the partial design on the baptistery wainscot and the second tower. Here in the American Southwest, San Xavier del Bac demonstrates Moorish and Byzantine architectural influences with high arches, flat vaults and an ornate facade including a plaster cat and mouse perpetually chasing each other. A main altar has separate wings for the Suffering Savior Chapel with its St. Francis of Assisi statue, and the Sorrowful Mother Chapel with the inset statue of Dolorosa. The west door of the Sacristy includes the etched inscription Ano 1797.
On top of original adobe bricks, Franciscans used an exterior plaster made from lime, sand, water and juices of the prickly pear cactus as a binding agent. “San Xavier was truly the wonder of the frontier,” writes Fontana who cites an 1804 visitor who said, “Other missions here in the north should really be called chapels, but San Xavier is truly a church. It is 99 feet long. Its width is 22 feet in the nave and 60 feet at the transept that forms two side chapels,” which include “innumerable angels and seraphim.” Craftsmen working in Mexican guilds hand carved and painted the statues. A few of them came from other buildings such as the statue of San Cayetano, which was burned by Apaches in 1848 in the chapel at Tumacacori, Arizona and was carried north by Native women in burden baskets.
Over the decades, the church struggled on. Some years saw much needed restoration and repairs, including classrooms for a parochial school; other years resulted in neglect, damage by rainstorms and deterioration. As late as 1906 the east tower had not yet been plastered or painted. Between 1900 and 1912, French-born Bishop of Tucson, Henry Granjon focused on church restoration, replacing some finials on the rooftop parapets and substituting lion heads for bearlike heads.
Finally in 1978, concerned Tucson residents created the nonprofit The Patronato San Xavier, whose funding is “to be used solely and exclusively for historical research, scientific and educational purposes concerned with the restoration, maintenance and preservation” of the Mission. A year later in 1979, I arrived in the winter to see the first of $10 million spent on conservation. A friend and I were able to photograph the interior, and climb high into the choir loft and look down into San Xavier’s Baroque sacred space. International conservators have been at work ever since. In 1992, Italian experts trained four San Xavier Tohono O’odham in conservation techniques, making a lasting impression on the ancient church.
There is “the never-ending work of keeping pigments and plaster intact despite the ravages of underlying salts that swell and fester because of our heat and humidity. Other issues include removing the nests of mud-dauber wasps in all sorts of crevices,” says author Fontana.
Because of possible earthquake damage, the original finials, replaced by cast concrete replicas weighing 293 pounds each, have themselves been replaced with fiberglass finials. As for the church’s interior, it “is by far the best preserved and most inspiring of that of any Spanish church in what today is the United States,” Bernard Fontana says.
After extensive training, docents lead tours for visitors, but the church remains primarily a house of worship for the Tohono O’odham. In the west transept, a statue of St. San Xavier reclines in his bier covered by a handmade cloth, which itself is covered by snapshots, wrist bands, milagros or charms and other offerings from the devout who petition him for healing. San Xavier del Bac, the cathedral in the desert, remains a living entity with open doors for all who come with open hearts.
a living entity with open doors for all who come with open hearts.
Andrew Gulliford is an award-winning author and editor and a professor of history at Fort Lewis College. He can be reached at gulliford_a@fortlewis.edu.
