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IN 1209, POPE INNOCENT III approved a plan by Francis of Assisi for a new way of religious life. This year, Franciscans around the world are marking the Eighth Centenary of the founding of their Order. In 1859, the entity that became St. John the Baptist Province in Cincinnati was formally erected as a “custody.” This 12-part series, commemorating the 150th anniversary of the province, celebrates the lives and contributions of the friars.
From the beginning, it was an unlikely alliance that transcended language, customs and organized religion.
“It was an extraordinary confluence of two cultures coming together in an extraordinary way at the beginning of the 20th Century,” Fr. Murray Bodo says of the relationship between missionary friars from St. John the Baptist Province and the Navajo people of the Southwest. Together they formed a circle of trust that was built upon patience, persistence and curiosity. Somehow, despite their differences, they saw in each other the capacity for friendship.
The friars were followers of St. Francis, whose care for creation extended from sea to sky. Likewise, “They [the Navajos] have a mystical relationship to their land,” says Murray. “There’s also a kinship between the friars and the Indians because they’re a nomadic people,” since St. Francis encouraged itinerancy among the friars. In their devotion to rituals, the Navajo recognized a similar reverence among friars for their ceremonial Mass.
The story of the pioneering friars began with a request from Mother (now Saint) Katharine Drexel, who wanted to build schools for Navajo children in the Southwest and needed clerics to say Mass for the sisters who would staff those schools. When in 1898 she invited friars from St. John the Baptist Province to join this adventure, they said yes, mindful of their own missionary journey from the Austrian Tyrol a half-century earlier.
Fr. Anselm Weber, Br. Placidus Buerger and Fr. Juvenal Schnorbus boarded a train in Cincinnati on Oct. 3, 1898, and arrived in Gallup, N.M., four days later. Renting a rig from a livery stable, they set out on a 29-mile journey to a tract of land on the Navajo reservation just inside the Arizona border. Hours after their arrival at Cienega, a spot the Indians called “Ts’ohootso” (“place of the big meadows”), the friars were disabused of any notion that their mission would be easy.
“It was an extraordinary confluence of two cultures coming together in an extraordinary way at the beginning of the 20th Century,” Fr. Murray Bodo says of the relationship between missionary friars from St. John the Baptist Province and the Navajo people of the Southwest. Together they formed a circle of trust that was built upon patience, persistence and curiosity. Somehow, despite their differences, they saw in each other the capacity for friendship.
The friars were followers of St. Francis, whose care for creation extended from sea to sky. Likewise, “They [the Navajos] have a mystical relationship to their land,” says Murray. “There’s also a kinship between the friars and the Indians because they’re a nomadic people,” since St. Francis encouraged itinerancy among the friars. In their devotion to rituals, the Navajo recognized a similar reverence among friars for their ceremonial Mass.
The story of the pioneering friars began with a request from Mother (now Saint) Katharine Drexel, who wanted to build schools for Navajo children in the Southwest and needed clerics to say Mass for the sisters who would staff those schools. When in 1898 she invited friars from St. John the Baptist Province to join this adventure, they said yes, mindful of their own missionary journey from the Austrian Tyrol a half-century earlier.
Fr. Anselm Weber, Br. Placidus Buerger and Fr. Juvenal Schnorbus boarded a train in Cincinnati on Oct. 3, 1898, and arrived in Gallup, N.M., four days later. Renting a rig from a livery stable, they set out on a 29-mile journey to a tract of land on the Navajo reservation just inside the Arizona border. Hours after their arrival at Cienega, a spot the Indians called “Ts’ohootso” (“place of the big meadows”), the friars were disabused of any notion that their mission would be easy.
The building they were promised was a roofless trading post. The natives’ supposed familiarity with English was a myth. But instead of taking the train home, Anselm, Placidus and Juvenal erected a 24-foot wooden cross, christened their mission St. Michael the Archangel, and set about learning the ways of the Navajo, or as they called themselves, the “Diné” (“the people”). The strangers from Cincinnati (or, “Édnishodi,” meaning, “those who drag their gowns”) were initially viewed with suspicion and indifference.
With time came trust. Anselm, known as “The Apostle to the Navajo,” laid the groundwork for missions in Fort Defiance, Chinle and Lukachukai, Ariz., and Tohatchi, N.M. In 1900, friars began ministry among Pueblo Native Americans at Pena Blanca, N.M. 1902 saw the dream of Katharine Drexel realized, the opening of St. Michael’s Indian School near the original mission at Cienega.
For most of the 20th Century, “The American Southwest was intimately connected with our identity as a province,” Murray says. And as a result of the association, “Our own horizons were broadened enormously.”
(Murray Bodo, a native of Gallup, transcribed and edited Tales of an Ednishodi, the audiotaped memories of linguist Berard Haile.)
NEXT: SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT
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“Language was the way into the whole world of the Navajo,” Murray says. That first winter in Arizona, the German-speaking friars painstakingly assembled a vocabulary, exchanging food and coffee
for Navajo phrases, poring over mail-order catalogs and connecting
for Navajo phrases, poring over mail-order catalogs and connecting
objects with words. “Berard Haile [a missionary friar] felt the friars shouldn’t even preach the Gospel to the Navajo until they learned their language, their concepts, their world view.”
To do so, “They had to learn to ride horseback and cover an enormous amount of [reservation]
To do so, “They had to learn to ride horseback and cover an enormous amount of [reservation]
territory” to reach 200,000 Navajo scattered over more than 20,000 square miles of mountains, rivers, canyons and plains in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. “It was very difficult physically, but they really were tough. They knew it was going to be slow work.”
With time came trust. Anselm, known as “The Apostle to the Navajo,” laid the groundwork for missions in Fort Defiance, Chinle and Lukachukai, Ariz., and Tohatchi, N.M. In 1900, friars began ministry among Pueblo Native Americans at Pena Blanca, N.M. 1902 saw the dream of Katharine Drexel realized, the opening of St. Michael’s Indian School near the original mission at Cienega.
For most of the 20th Century, “The American Southwest was intimately connected with our identity as a province,” Murray says. And as a result of the association, “Our own horizons were broadened enormously.”
(Murray Bodo, a native of Gallup, transcribed and edited Tales of an Ednishodi, the audiotaped memories of linguist Berard Haile.)
NEXT: SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT
Previous stories
In 1985, friars working in the Southwest voted to create a separate province, Our Lady of Guadalupe. The friars of OLG Province minister primarily among Hispanics and Native Americans in the Dioceses of New Mexico, the Diocese of Denver, Colo., and in the Navajo Nation.
Today, where 45 friars from St. John the Baptist Province once served, five remain. Our Lady of Fatima Church in Chinle, Ariz., built in the shape of a hogan, symbolizes the union of two cultures, both deeply enriched by their relationship. For its Franciscan pastor, Blane Grein, life among the Navajo “has been God’s gift to me.”
Today, where 45 friars from St. John the Baptist Province once served, five remain. Our Lady of Fatima Church in Chinle, Ariz., built in the shape of a hogan, symbolizes the union of two cultures, both deeply enriched by their relationship. For its Franciscan pastor, Blane Grein, life among the Navajo “has been God’s gift to me.”
“They realized God was out here before we came on the scene,” says Friar Blane Grein, pastor of Our Lady of Fatima in Chinle, Ariz., speaking of the early missionary friars. In one sense, says Murray Bodo, “It was a modern missiology, that you don’t superimpose your culture along with your religion. They had a vision that friars could be middlemen and advocates for these people with the Anglo-American culture that surrounded them.” Through the efforts of the friars:
• More than 1.5 million acres were added to the Navajo reservation. Anselm Weber personally surveyed 15,840 acres and petitioned the federal government in letters and in person on their behalf.
• The Navajo language was preserved in written form, thanks to Friar Berard Haile, who devised an alphabet and compiled An Ethnological Dictionary of the Navajo Language.
• The ways and customs of the Navajo people were studied and recorded by Friar Leopold Ostermann, who wrote extensively on anthropology and championed the cause of Native Americans.
• Friar Simeon Schwemberger created
“a treasure trove of priceless historical photographs of Navajo life in the early decades of the 20th century,” Murray says.
• The first systematic census of the Navajo people was completed by Friar Marcellus Troester. According to Murray, “It came to be the most complete record of kinship ties” ever compiled.
• More than 1.5 million acres were added to the Navajo reservation. Anselm Weber personally surveyed 15,840 acres and petitioned the federal government in letters and in person on their behalf.• The Navajo language was preserved in written form, thanks to Friar Berard Haile, who devised an alphabet and compiled An Ethnological Dictionary of the Navajo Language.
• The ways and customs of the Navajo people were studied and recorded by Friar Leopold Ostermann, who wrote extensively on anthropology and championed the cause of Native Americans.
• Friar Simeon Schwemberger created
“a treasure trove of priceless historical photographs of Navajo life in the early decades of the 20th century,” Murray says.
• The first systematic census of the Navajo people was completed by Friar Marcellus Troester. According to Murray, “It came to be the most complete record of kinship ties” ever compiled.
