Death Comes for the Archbishop

“‘A priest!’ She cried. ‘That is not possible. And yet I look at you, and it is true. Such a thing has never happened to us before; it must be an answer to my father’s prayers.’”

This quote speaks to New Mexico’s history as a territory. Although colonized by Spain during the 16th century and home to many communities of Catholics, New Mexico was also part of the frontier and was still undeveloped and remote. Many parishes had never had their own priests, and Indigenous traditions and spiritual beliefs often coexisted with Catholic practices.

“The faith planted by the Spanish friars and watered with their blood was not dead; it awaited only the toil of the husbandmen. He was not troubled about the revolt in Santa Fe, or the powerful old native priest who led it, Father Martínez, of Taos, who had ridden over from his parish expressly to receive the new Vicar and drive him away.”

This passage alludes to the fraught history of colonialism and the Catholic Church in the region. Catholicism was part of Spain’s “soft power” within its territories, and it used the church to help advance the assimilationist project of colonialism. Indigenous populations were, in some cases forcibly, “encouraged” to convert, but the process wasn’t always easy or free of violence. Some local clergy, like Father Martínez in Taos, sided with their Indigenous parishioners in disputes between locals and the church, and priests occasionally fought alongside Indigenous men and women in their efforts to retain freedom and autonomy.

“The lady spoke to him with all comfort, telling him that his uncle would be healed within the hour and that he should return to Bishop Zumarraga and bid him to build a church where she had first appeared to him. It must be called the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

Death Comes for the Archbishop engages with many aspects of New Mexico’s cultural and religious history. Here, Father Latour learns of the appearance of the Blessed Virgin and of the construction of the famed shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe. This