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August 25, 2020by Father Greg Adolf
Padre Kino – the “Padre on Horseback” - entered the vast area spanning northern Sonora and southern Arizona, called the “Pimeria Alta” – (the land of the upper Pimas, named for its most numerous related-language Native People) – and for almost 25 years labored to evangelize the many beautiful souls living out their lives in the desert.
The late renowned priest/historian, Father Charles Polzer, S.J., was fond of saying that “in the ruddy dusk of March 13, 1687, Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino cantered into Cucurpe, and the history of this area changed.” He founded 24 missions and many visitas, and established 19 rancherias, beginning the cattle industry in this area. In many of his mission settlements, he planted fruit trees and introduced new grains to augment the tradition crops of the Natives. He cared for both the material and spiritual needs of the people with whom he wanted to share the Gospel of Christ. Folklorist Jim Griffith likes to tell those who have shared his Kino Mission tours that Padre Kino’s lasting legacy is secure whenever we enjoy carne asada wrapped in a flour tortilla.A gifted mathematician, astronomer and cartographer, Eusebio Kino made 14 expeditions across the region – and mapped an area 200 miles long and 250 miles wide – from his mission headquarters, Dolores in Sonora, to the Gila River and from the San Pedro River to the Colorado River. By careful scientific investigation and later by exploration and what we would call “field research,” he proved that California was not an island but a peninsula. He baptized, confirmed and fed the bread of life to the people he served.
His interaction with the Desert Peoples anticipated, by several centuries, that process now called “inculturation.” Fr. Kino's Catholic faith has the profound truth of the Incarnate presence of God to offer the world. Other people, of other traditions, had their experience of God to offer Fr. Kino. Fr. Kino's sensitivity to desert spiritual protocol and custom, as well as his extraordinary gift for languages, made him an apt and eager learner of the wisdom of the Desert Peoples and not simply a teacher of the Christian Faith. Through his service and prayer Fr. Kino pursued union with Christ and strove to share that relationship, that experience of mercy with the desert people. His missionary zeal foresaw the universal call to holiness the Risen Christ extends to all people. At the Second Vatican Council, the Council Fathers could well have used Fr. Kino's example to illustrate this call:
As often as the sacrifice of the cross in which Christ our Passover was sacrificed, is celebrated on the altar, the work of our redemption is carried on, and, in the sacrament of the eucharistic bread, the unity of all believers who form one body in Christ is both expressed and brought about. All men are called to this union with Christ, who is the light of the world, from whom we go forth, through whom we live, and toward whom our whole life strains. The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium, par. 3.
Fr. Kino gave his life of prayer, sacrament and preaching to the gospel during his 24 years in the Pimeria Alta. He traveled more than 50,000 square miles to proclaim the Word of God, to baptize and to exchange wisdom with the people he encountered and learned to love so well.
His death on March 15, 1711 at Magdalena (now Magdalena de Kino), ended his apostolic career in one sense, His his lasting presence and influence in the lives of those of he served continues into the present. Please pray for the intercession of Venerable Padre Kino, that his sanctity might be universally recognized and that his bridge building between cultures might be an example to all of us amidst our present concerns and crisis.
Fr. Greg Adoph leads the Kino Mission Pilgrimage. For more information contact the Southwest Mission Research Center