A late-blooming "cowboy saint"?

Word Among Us, Jul 2003 by Perrotta, Louisa

A Late-Blooming "Cowboy Saint"?

The Story of Euesbio Kino

by Louise Perrotta

In an exceptional way, Eusebio Francisco Kino was that "good and faithful servant" who leaves no God-given talent undeveloped in his service of the Master.

A missionary first and foremost, Kino was also an explorer whose expert maps of parts of present-day Arizona, California, and Mexico remained in use long after his death. He was a skilled astronomer; whose book on the Great Comet of 1680 was praised for its "perfect knowledge" of the sciences. He was the far-seeing pioneer who introduced cattle ranching and wheat farming to the American West. He was a community builder and diplomat who knew how to create links and foster unity among many ethnic groups. And he sure knew how to handle a horse! Even in his sixties, he could do thirty miles' hard riding a day for weeks at a time.

Padre Kino's astonishing example of wide-ranging expertise put at the service of the gospel invites us to a broader view of evangelization. It encourages us to recognize that we can build God's kingdom by developing even our "unspiritual" looking gifts and engaging in the world around us.

Delays and Detours. Kino decided to be a missionary in 1663, when he was eighteen and suffering from a life-- threatening illness. He vowed that if he recovered, he would enter the Society of Jesus and ask to be sent to China. China was worlds away from his home town, Segno, Italy, in the Tyrolean Alps. However, the young man was captivated by the stories his parents had told about a priest relative who worked in the Chinese missions.

Eusebio regained his health and entered the Jesuits in 1665. During his twelve-year formation period, China was always on his mind. He preferred living in rooms with east-facing windows-"so that I might be comforted many times during the day, by the mere sight of the East." Knowing that Chinese rulers especially respected the mathematical sciences, he studied them diligently and became proficient at map-making and astronomy.

In 1678, after eight years of asking for a mission assignment to China, Kino got a qualified yes. He would go to either Asia or America, where Jesuits were attending to the spiritual needs of Spain's spreading empire. The choice was left up to him and another Jesuit who had also been tapped for missionary work. They decided to settle the issue by drawing lots. How disappointed Eusebio must have been when he drew the slip of paper marked "Mexico"!

Kino struggled to be impartial, but he longed for China even after reaching Mexico in May 1681. As he wrote a friend, "I dare not anticipate, seek, or desire one place rather than another lest someone should rebuke me with the words, `You know not what you ask "' Finally he entrusted the matter to Our Lady of Guadalupe. Before long, the Spanish king authorized an expedition to Baja California, and Eusebio was appointed its missionary and official map-maker. With a prayer that God's will be done, he shelved his China dreams for good and plunged wholeheartedly into this new adventure.

Father of Missions. To Kino's dismay, the California mission was called off within three years. By March 1687, he was beginning a new assignment as missionary to the Pimeria Alta, the area which includes present-day northern Sonora, Mexico, and southern Arizona. At forty-two, Padre Kino had finally found his calling!

After a fifteen-hundred-mile horseback journey from Mexico City, Eusebio arrived at the frontier mission station of Cucurpe on Sonora's upper San Miguel River. To the east and south were Spanish settlements-- silver-mining camps and towns, ranches, and missions. North and west lay Pimeria Alta, the little-known country of the Upper Pima tribes.

Kino quickly scouted out his new territory, elated that all the people he met "received with love the word of God for the sake of their eternal salvation." Within a week, he had visited a seventy-five-mile area and established missions in four tribal villages. Nuestra Senora de los Dolores (Our Lady of Sorrows), the first in the chain of more than twenty missions he founded during the next quarter-century, became his home base.

Among all of Kino's missions, Dolores stood out as his crowning achievement. By 1695, it included more than ninety families and was a self-sustaining center of religious life and economic activity. Eusebio pointed with pride to its church and rectory, carpenter shop, blacksmith forge, and water mill.

Concerned about providing food and economic independence for the converts who came to live at his missions, Padre Kino was resourceful and innovative. He introduced cattle and established the beginnings of ranching; he was "easily the cattle king of his day and region," according to one biographer. He helped the people to expand their farming skills by teaching them to grow wheat and cultivate imported fruits and vegetables. "He fashioned a whole new economy in the harsh, sun-baked land," one Arizona historian wrote.

From Dolores, Padre Kino pushed the frontier of missionary work and exploration. He opened trails, riding on horseback through wilderness inhabited by potentially hostile tribes. A careful observer, he wrote journals, letters, and a memoir that are important sources for the history of Sonora and Arizona. He was the first to traverse and accurately map these regions, as well as Mexican California, which he conclusively proved was not an island as many thought, but the lower (baja) part of a large land mass.