Arizona’s San Xavier del Bac rethinks approach to tourism
TUCSON, Ariz. – A little black sign greets visitors as they walk into the San Xavier del Bac Mission south of Tucson.
“Welcome to this house of worship. Please speak quietly, so as not to disturb those in prayer, God bless you.”
This is what the San Xavier del Bac church was always meant to be: A place of prayer. One of refuge. A place for the Tohono O’odham people to come together and worship, said Father William Minkel, known as Father Bill to his congregation and pastor of the mission since 2019.
The church doesn’t always feel this way for the people of Wa:k Village, however.
As the years have gone by, the church has filled up with more visitors than community members.
“It’s increasingly become a place for tourists as they’re more able to retire and visit,” Minkel said. “And it’s been evolving. My concern is that it doesn’t happen at the expense of people of faith and the Tohono O’odham community. Sometimes people here feel like it’s not their church anymore. ”
San Xavier del Bac’s history goes back centuries. In 1692, Italian missionary Father Eusebio Kino visited the southern Arizona village of Wa:k – the “village of water” – for the first time. With 800 people living there, it was one of the largest villages of the Tohono O’odham people.
Kino established a mission and named it San Francisco Xavier del Wa:k in honor of St. Francis Xavier, his patron saint. He planned to make it the cabecera, or the hub, for all the other missions in the region, said Father Greg Adolf, a historian and the priest of St. Andrew the Apostle Parish in Sierra Vista.
Kino laid the foundation for a large church in 1700. He dug ditches and placed stones as the base for sundried adobe blocks. But he did not live to fulfill his dream. After his death in 1711, other missionaries resided for brief periods at the location.
It was the villagers who upheld the mission – who acted as faithful custodians of the several churches on the site and caretakers of the vessels and ornaments – during long periods without a resident missionary, Minkel said.
In 1783, the construction of the present church of adobe and plaster began under the leadership of Fray Juan Bautista Velderrain. Native workers from Mexico and Franciscan missionaries worked together to complete the mission.
After 14 years, the “White Dove of the Desert,” as it’s also known, was finished in 1797.
San Xavier del Bac is one of the few mission churches in the Southwest that still serves the original population for which it was built. That’s why preserving it for the Tohono O’odham people is crucial, Adolf said. The Patronato de San Xavier, an organization comprising tribal members and other local residents, has been carrying out preservation work at the mission for more than 30 years.
‘It’s not an attraction’
Until the COVID-19 pandemic, many tourists visited San Xavier. Docents showed them around the church and grounds, Minkel said, which made it feel more like a museum than a worship space. Tour buses filled the parking lot.
These were the first things Minkel noticed when he arrived in 2019. And soon after his arrival, his mission became simple: He wanted to preserve what the church had meant to the people since its start.
“It’s a bit off-putting when you’re coming to pray and there’s groups of people,” Minkel said. “If their interest is simply history and taking pictures of the artwork and not realizing that someone is there praying for someone who is sick in the hospital, you don’t want that dynamic to have a chilling effect on a person’s peace of mind.”
Ivan Burrell, 40, has worked at the church for 21 years.
Born and raised in Wa:k Village, San Xavier is home. It’s where his parents had him baptized and where he chose to be confirmed as a Catholic.
In addition to tending the church grounds, Burrell teaches the Bible to kids and prays the rosary with his prayer group once a week.
He loves sharing the church with visitors, he said. Many are friendly and kind. But some don’t understand the purpose of the mission, Burrell said.
“Some of them think we still live in teepees here,” he said. “Others will ask to take a picture with us because they say they’ve never seen a Native American before. People ask me questions and I have to say, ‘No, we don’t live in teepees,’ or ‘No, we don’t speak Mexican.’ It hurts.”
As the Patronato advertised and sought support for the renovation project, more tourists came to see the church.
Guided tours started in 2011, Minkel said. Docents leading large groups would interrupt community members who had come to worship, said Tim Lewis, a member of the conservation team.
He and his wife stopped regularly attending the church 10 years ago.
“It’s a religious place and people just don’t get it,” Lewis said. “It’s not an attraction. There were signs out there but people are so busy talking so they don’t pay attention to what’s around them. They get chatty and noisy and it’s not respectful. I was tired of it.”
‘ They wanted to get closer to God’
Then COVID-19 changed everything.
San Xavier was the first church in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson to shut down at the start of the pandemic.
The only sound was the occasional ringing of a bell. The peal delivered a solemn message: Another person had passed away.
“Whatever my plans were became secondary to keeping people here safe,” Minkel said.
By June 2020, services had resumed, with some changes. The museum is still closed. Tours haven’t resumed. When – if – they start again is under consideration, Minkel said. Mass is still held outside.
One Sunday morning service is reserved for Tohono O’odham members. Father Bill protects that time, Narcho said.
“He wants to do everything for the community,” Narcho said. “Other priests that were here didn’t tell people, ‘You can’t come to this Mass, it’s for the community, and dismiss them and tell them to leave,’ and he has done that for us.”
And yet, San Xavier del Bac is still a place for anyone who wants to worship, said Narcho, Burrell, Nuñez and Minkel. There are Mass times for people in the surrounding communities to come, as well as tourists.
“I believe everyone comes with something, some kind of curiosity, some kind of hunger, even the most hardened of hearts,” Minkel said. “My hope is that they get a sense of the sacredness that we try to preserve through the building of the ground, a sense of the holy.”