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111 chapter eight FRAY ANGÉLICO CHÁVEZ: The Roots of Franciscan Priesthood p jack clark robinson, o.f.m. Casa Rivo Torto, Los Lunas, New Mexico I am not a professional historian or artist, nor a professional writer or literary critic. If I have a profession, it is that I am a professed member of the Order of Friars Minor, the Franciscans, and an ordained priest of the Roman Catholic Church. I cannot speak about Fray Angélico Chávez as a professional historian, artist, writer, or critic, but then neither could Angélico himself have spoken as a professional historian or artist, as a professional writer or professional critic, though certainly he was at one time or another paid for all of those activities, and his level of accomplishment in all of those areas was also certainly in keeping with the highest professional standards. But by profession Fray Ang élico Chávez was a member of the Order of Friars Minor and a Roman Catholic priest. In order to appreciate and understand Fray Angélico’s work as a historian, artist, writer, and critic, it is necessary first to see him in the context of his profession and to have some idea of what that profession meant to him and what that profession meant in the world in which he lived and worked. Manuel Ezequiel Chávez, son of Fabián Chávez and Nicolosa Roybal, born on April 10, 1910, was baptized on May 14, 1910, according to the rite of the Roman Catholic Church, in Saint Clare Church, Wagon Mound, New Mexico . In that time and place there were a number of certainties about the Roman Catholic priests who served the far-flung parishes of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe. First, many of the priests were foreign, mostly French and Belgian, and therefore exotic in the minds of the native New Mexicans, who were primarily of Hispanic and Native American descent. The priest who performed the ceremony of baptism for Manuel was the Reverend Maurice Olier.∞ Second, 112 The Life of a Franciscan the priests were generally among the most traveled and best educated members of the community; they were seen as sophisticated and cosmopolitan. They spoke Latin as if they knew what they were saying. Third, priests were seen as men who lived lives of self-sacrifice for the sake of God and others, so they were owed respect and reverence. Finally, the priests were perceived as those who were ‘‘close to God,’’ who ‘‘talked to God,’’ and who were ‘‘about holy things,’’ most especially the sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church. Perhaps this aspect of priesthood was best captured by the teenage Manuel Chávez in a short verse entitled ‘‘The Priesthood’’: God drew me out of nothing And held me in His hands; He draws me out of nothing— I hold Him in my hand.≤ These attitudes toward priests were much the same when the young Manuel and his family moved to Mora, New Mexico, from Wagon Mound, after a brief sojourn in California, and then on to Santa Fe.≥ In Mora, where he attended public school sta√ed by the religious Sisters of Loretto, Manuel started to read everything that he could about the history of New Mexico, and everything that he read emphasized the contributions of the Franciscans to its early history.∂ Young Manuel’s family moved to Santa Fe only three years after the return of the Franciscans to the city in 1921 to sta√ the cathedral. The Franciscans had been absent from the city for more than seventy-five years when, in May 1919, Albert Thomas Daeger, a Franciscan, became the sixth archbishop of Santa Fe. The archbishop was able to sta√ Saint Francis Cathedral as well as other parishes in northern New Mexico with his brother Franciscans. Suddenly, those colorful brown-robed figures whom the curious young boy had only read about in history books came to life around him. The results were almost predictable. On August 9, 1924, at age fourteen, Manuel Ezequiel Chávez applied to attend the high-school seminary of the Franciscans in Cincinnati, the first stage of preparation for religious life and priesthood that had also been taken by the Franciscans he knew in Santa Fe.∑ If the Roman Catholic priesthood in general in northern New Mexico was composed of men who were seen as exotic, sophisticated, close to God, and worthy of reverence, then the Franciscans were seen as all of...

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