Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

First published in 1927; published by Penguin Vitae on November 14, 2023

Death Comes for the Archbishop tells the story of Jean Marie Latour, a French priest who served for ten years as a missionary in Ohio before the Vatican made him a Bishop and assigned him to the western territory that the US acquired from Mexico. The story follows Latour from his arrival in Santa Fe to his death as an Archbishop. The novel’s copyright expired this year, which likely explains Penguin’s decision to reissue it, though Penguin claims to be doing so to celebrate Willa Cather’s 150th birthday. Regardless of motivation, Cather was a remarkable writer and any effort to keep her work in print is worthy of celebration.

In Santa Fe, Latour takes charge of a diocese with unknown boundaries. After the US creates the states of New Mexico and Arizona, Latour’s jurisdiction extends to both, although he will need to negotiate with Mexican bishops to the extent that political boundaries divide existing parishes. Conferring over distances of thousands of miles is no easy task when telegraph wires remain to be strung and travel must be accomplished on horseback. Latour’s diocese later expands to the Colorado Rockies when the gold rush inflates the population. The prospectors have plenty of saloons and gambling rooms but no priests.

Joseph Vaillant, another Frenchman, has been Latour’s best friend since their days in the seminary. He joins Latour as a reliable ally. Vaillant prefers Tucson to Santa Fe, but he feels his true mission is to find distant communities that priests never visit. Vaillant wishes to convert Indians and restore religious teachings to Mexican Catholics who can’t quite remember what they are supposed to believe, apart from veneration of the Virgin Mary.

Vaillant does not suffer from the sin of pride; he is as comfortable with the poor and uneducated as he is with the Cardinals in Rome. Unlike the more reticent Latour, Vaillant is built for the life of a missionary. He eventually takes on Colorado as his most challenging assignment.

The story provides a clear-headed and amusing look at priests in the wild West. Some are pious, some are gamblers or drinkers, some have left a trail of pregnant women across their parish, some are outright thieves who betray parishioners (most of whom are Mexicans or Native Americans) to acquire their land. Latour and Vaillant are pious and devoted to their faith, making it their duty to clean house, albeit cautiously.

While some of the priests under Latour’s command are not particularly interested in maintaining their vows of poverty or chastity, one priest suggests that the local priesthood represents a living church, “not a dead arm of the European church. Our religion grew out of the soil and has its own roots.” It is an indigenous church, one that is more fun than Rome’s, but the Catholics in Latour’s diocese are devout. Latour concludes that European formalities would destroy their faith and that disciplining a scandalous priest might come at the cost of losing his loyal flock. A competing view suggests that the parishioners are adaptable and will follow a pious priest just as readily as one who has a more relaxed attitude about religious decorum.

The novel focuses on the personalities of Latour and Vaillant rather than their religious beliefs. Apart from relating the occasional miracle, Cather’s goal is not to proselytize but to explore Latour’s challenging life. Cather ignores church doctrine while emphasizing Latour’s devotion to orchards and gardens. Latour wants his priests to save souls but also to bring fruit and vegetables into starchy Mexican diets.

Much of the novel reads like an adventure story combined with a western. In an elegant voice, Cather captures the time and place with stirring descriptions of the New Mexico desert, the hardship of travel by horse or mule, and the fortitude of people who live in “the hard heart of a country that was calculated to try the endurance of giants.” Latour admires Indians who, unlike Europeans, respect nature without trying to conquer it. “It was as if the great country were asleep, and they wished to carry on their lives without awakening it; or as if the spirits of earth and air and water were things not to antagonize and arouse.”

Latour is happy to see an end to the Indian Wars and to slavery before he dies, but the story is more personal than political. Latour nevertheless makes an effort to save a small tribe from Kit Carson’s brutal approach to warfare. When the tribe’s chief ventures out from his sheltering canyon to meet with the Bishop, Latour develops an appreciation of the gods who dwelt in “inaccessible white houses set in caverns up in the face of the cliffs, which were older than the white man’s world, and which no living man had ever entered. Their gods were there, just as the Padre’s God was in his church.” Latour’s flexibility of thought demonstrates how open minds inspire better lives. In a time when people who are capable of seeing others are derided for being“woke,” Cather’s lesson carries enduring value.

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