Father Francisco Valdovinos

58, Mecca

Luz Gallegos, an immigrant rights activist, was immediately struck by the eagerness radiating from a new parish priest when she met him for the first time to discuss putting on legal clinics for his migrant parishioners.

“OK mija, we need to do this. Let’s do this. Let’s start,” Father Francisco Valdovinos told Gallegos, who heads TODEC, a legal center for migrants in the Coachella Valley.

That was her introduction to the pastor of Our Lady Guadalupe Church in Mecca, a man who had forged a legacy everywhere he worked over more than 25 years as a member of the Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity.

Valdovinos, born March 29, 1962, in the small pueblo of Santa Ana Amatlan in Mexico’s Michoacan state, was a tireless luminary who rose beyond his duties as a spiritual leader to tackle the needs of the community members he served, particularly the most disadvantaged.

“Right away, he opened the doors to his parish, to bring these different resources to his community that was in much need,” Gallegos said. “He really did God’s work. He not only preached it, but he walked the walk.”

By the time he arrived in the tiny, low-income agricultural community of Mecca in May 2018, he had already blazed a long trail of spiritual and community service in Mexico, where he was ordained in 1994, as well as in Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Tallahassee, Fla., and Compton, where he served as pastor until 2017 and partnered with the Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles to start a literacy program at his parish.

Valdovinos brought the same literacy program to Mecca, a small town near the Salton Sea in Riverside County, and quickly became a hit as he delivered sermons and tended to parishioners with verve.

The priest was a common sight in the fields on the outskirts of town, where he’d appear suddenly with sack lunches for the sweltering workers.

“He was always with the people,” said Emma Fernandez, a secretary who worked closely with Valdovinos at the Mecca church. “Sometimes he’d come back from the grape fields and tell us, ‘Some of these workers are very young, let’s encourage them to keep on with their studies.’”

Valdovinos paid special attention to Mecca’s large Purepecha community, an indigenous people native to Michoacan, in central Mexico, the same state where Valdovinos was raised in a family of farmworkers.

Menegildo Ortiz, a leader in the Purepecha community, remembered Valdovinos telling him: “I’m here to serve the entire community, but I really want to focus on helping the Purepechas.”

The pandemic only heightened Valdovinos’ humanitarian zeal.

Every week he stood out by the parish’s front doors and helped load food boxes into cars streaming in from a long caravan that coiled into the church parking lot from the street. Valdovinos also ensured that his parish became a regular coronavirus testing site.

When he fell ill with COVID-19 in December, Valdovinos needed to be persuaded to go to a hospital, Gallegos said. He didn’t want to abandon his front-line work.

His followers agonized for weeks as Valdovinos fought for his life at JFK Memorial Hospital in Indio. More than a thousand people poured into a Facebook Live session to pray for a miracle. Valdovinos died on Jan. 17 at age 58. His hospitalization and death sent shock waves through Mecca and stamped out myths about the virus that had been circulating there, Gallegos said.

Many have processed Valdovinos’ death as his final noble act.

“We’re using his life as an example of what it is to be a servant,” Gallegos said. “A real community servant who gave his life to protect his community.”