This is just a story of a Franciscan priest in Mexico called Fray Angelico . . .

by Harold Butcher
The New Mexican sun blazed in a blue sky, its rays beating upon the Indians as they danced to the drums in the plaza of San Felipe pueblo. A crowd of Anglostourists and residents from Santa Fe—hugged the cool shade of the adobe huts that formed the square and watched the dancersstrong, broad-backed men wearing skins and feathers on their otherwise naked bodies, their feet raised well above the ground With eeery step, and stout, placid women in heavy dresses of bright colours accompanying the menin a shining rhythm.
In his shrine the wooden image cif San helipe stood throughout thc long morning and afternoon while the ancient patterns oi the Corn Dance unfolded.
Into this scene came a young Franciscan padre, Fray Angelico Chavez, his brown habit like that of Fray Maros de Nista, who, four hundred yClIS ago, led Coronado and his Conquistadui,. hum Old Mexico into what ie now the Aruejii.jan Southwest. Save rot the spectators, the scene was one that Fray Marcos himself might have encountered, for the centuries have brought little change. To Fray Angelico everything was familiar, and as he walked in the plaza he spoke to many friends among Angles and Indians alike -to the Angles who knew him as pact and painter to the Indians who knew him as priest. He was born in the prairie town of Wagon Mound, New Mexico, of old Mexico stock—" but disclaiming all blue-blood and weatth," as he expressed it once—and was reared in the beautiful Mora Valley mountain country. The Southwest was in his Mood from the start ; here he belongs.
Thirteen years of his life Fray Angelico spent away from his beloved Southwest, hut those years of voluntary exile were accepted as a way to enter even more fully into the life of the New Mexico where he was born. As a boy, he greatly admired the Franciscans. who till—in fact, made— Southwest history, and when he was fourteen, in 1929, he went east to follow the thirteen-year curriculum neceSsary for the education ot a Franciscan father—six years in Cincinnati, three in Detroit, four in Oldenburg, Indiana.
Then, his " exile " over, he returned to New Mexico for his ordination,
May 6, 1937, in St. Francis Cathedral of Santa Fe, the cathediat mem; famous by Archbishop Lamy, whose story, in fiction form, was told by Willa (Sather, Unforgettably, in Death Comes for the Archbishop. Thus equipped for his life work, he was stationed at Pena Blanca, whence he goes out to minister to the Indian pueblos of Santo Domingo, San Felipe and Cochiti.
" Behold the Dancers"
On such a day as this, Fray Angelico had watched the dancers in the pueblo of his Cochin mission, and later on had written: "Behold the dancers, like a rusty chain, Heave slowly in a brown unbroken line
Before a 3 uinr within his aspen shrine, The tasseled monarch of a strange domain.
Behold the dancers, how they call the rain Wirh fox-skins, rattles, and with sprays of pine, All heathen symbols of the sky's white wine, A prayer for plenty at a Christian Jane.
Saint Bonavemure, Lord of Cochin, Brown-robed Padre of Red-Hat-withTassels!
Make every tassel of the corn to see The roof-tops of your brown adobe castles:
Father, rain! Sweet rain! Rain let it he—
The sign between a Chieftain and his vassals!"
It was not unusual for the padre to express himself in verse. Ho had been doing it since he was a boy, and seeing poems published since he was sixteen.
In the late afternoon, when the San Felipe Indians had ended in their dance they gathered at the shrine of their saint, fired a rifle in his honour, and then took the shrine into their venerable church (founded 1694), where they said their prayers and dispersed.
Just Another Visit
In Fray Angelico's life this had been just another visit to his Indians. As their missionary, he is likely to be called at any time, and in these war days he
is particularly busy. At Pena Blanca, where he is assistant to the old pastor, he may spend an entire morning running down to the parlour to make out birth certificates for Indians in hetween filling up dratt and work questionnaires. But this is only a small part of his work; his geneial duties are those. of the ordinary Catholic priest in a small town keeping him busy from Mass at six in the morning until beddote, when he reads himself to sleep— sometimesearly, mosey late in the night. His special job is with the young —he conducts boys' and girls' societies, and is even a scoutmaster.
Beyond all this, Fray Angelico paints muralsin his Pena Blanca church, and does heavy construction work upon this adobe building to bring it into architectural harmony with the New Mexican landscape. When he first went to Pena Blanca he found that his predecessors had " beautified " the interior and exterior with a hodge-podge of unrelated additions and ornaments. " A gabled farm roof was surmounted with a dog-kennel befrey," he said, " and this was capped later on with a mosquelike derby painted with aluminium. False Gothic buttresses were set on the side and at every corner." The state of the building was such that he knew it would take years of spare time to make it truly beautiful ; and he knew that if he did not do the work it would remain undone. However, this did not daunt a follower of St. Francis, although people have often marvelled at the heavy work accomplished single-h'anded.
Fray Angelico insists that his painting is on the primitive side because he has never taken art lessons; nevertheless, critics have said that his murals are likely to make of Pena Blanca " the lodestone of religious art ih New Mexico."