It is a mystery to me why Tucson is often overlooked as a destination for visitors to Arizona. While it is not as large as Phoenix and does not have the cachet of Scottsdale or Sedona, Tucson offers one of the most fascinating collection of attractions anywhere in the United States, as well as two Catholic churches not to be missed.
What is it that makes Tucson and its surrounding region so fascinating?
For starters, you can descend deep below ground to Complex 571-7, to visit the only Cold War era nuclear missile silo open to the public, at the Titan Missile Museum. From there, you can acend to the heights of the Sonoran desert to Kitt Peak National Observatory, situated about 7,000 feet above sea level – 60 miles south of the city – to see the world’s greatest concentration of telescopes for space exploration; or visit the University of Arizona’s Sky Center on Mt. Lemmon north of the city. And not to be outdone, just west of the city, explore 21 acres of Sonoran desert and take in a zoo, aquarium, and botanical gardens at the one of a kind Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.
In the heart of downtown Tucson, is the Cathedral of St. Augustine with its 700 year old 17 foot carved Crucifix of Pamplona dominating the sanctuary, and vestibule lined with murals depicting the lives 18 saints who dedicated their life to serving the poor. Just off of I-10, one of the hidden jewels of the city is St. Gianna Oratory. The parish is the home of the Latin Mass community, and the oldest church in Tucson. It was founded by two Carmelite priests – Fr. Lucas of St. Joseph and Eduardo of St. Joseph – both of whom were martyred during the Spanish Civil War and beatified by Pope Benedict XVI.
While downtown, you can also visit a re-created mining tunnel and a restored Tucson city-scape from the late 1800s inside the Arizona History Museum. Other popular attractions in Tucson include the Pima Air and Space Museum – one of the world’s largest airplane collections with over 400 craft and six indoor hangars – and the Saguara National Park with its giant cacti, and over 200 petroglyphs (“rock art”) uncovered from the pre-Columbian tribes that once settled this range.
For the Catholic visitor, there are two destinations in the Tucson area that are not to be missed: the Shrine of Mary Undoer of Knots and the Mission of San Xavier del Bac.
Shrine of Mary Undoer of Knots
Mary Undoer of Knots Shrine is located in the Summerhaven village atop Mt. Lemmon; an oasis close to 9,000 feet above the desert, amid meadows and woods.
This Byzantine Catholic Shrine, dedicated to the Most Holy Theotokis (“God bearer”) – the title which Byzantine Catholics accord Our Blessed Mother – appears just as it would in a remote village of Eastern Europe, built in the iconic Boyko style of 16th century wooden Ukrainian churches. The particular Marian devotion it honors – Mary Undoer of Knots – came out of sixteenth century Germany and is a beautiful reminder of Mary’s role in guiding us through the ups and downs of daily life and removing the roadblocks that keep us from drawing closer to her Son.
In its purest sense, pilgrimage is about stepping away from our day-to-day routine to experience God in a completely new light. For Latin rite Catholics, what better opportunity to do this than to encounter Christ in the splendor of the Byzantine rite; what St. John Paul II referred to as the “eastern lung of the Catholic Church.”
The shrine complex – which consists of the chapel, a belltower with an original bell cast by Paul Revere, and a ramada honoring our military veterans – strikes at the chord of Byzantine theology by demonstrating a beautiful synthesis of ecology and spirituality; of Heaven touching Earth.
Stepping into the chapel and participating the Byzantine liturgy is like stepping into another world. The chapel is filled with icons and this iconography is effectively theology in color. For centuries, these sacred icons were used to teach eastern Catholics the life of Christ and the events commemorated in major feast days.
In the liturgy, all five senses are fully engaged in a way that is not always the case in the Roman liturgy: the entire Divine Liturgy is chanted; candles and incense are used extensively, and the faithful are surrounded by the rich colors embedded in the icons and paintings. And, the Divine Liturgy itself preserves a tradition dating back to 4th century Byzantium (Turkey) and the court of the Emperor Constantine at the time he converted to Christianity, passed down over the ages.
The ramada housing the veteran’s memorial is the perfect spot to reflect on the lives of all members of the Armed Forces who gave their lives for the sake of our freedom. This includes several notable Catholics, men like US Army Chaplain and Servant of God Fr. Emil Kapaun, and Navy Chaplain Servant of God Fr. Vincent Capodanno, whose causes for canonization are now being considered.
Mission San Xavier del Bac
The Mission Church of San Xavier del Bac was founded by the Venerable Fr. Eusebio Kino in 1692. It is located about 10 miles south of Tucson within the territory of the Tohono O’odham Nation.
Known as “the White Dove of the Desert,” it appears like a gleaming white palace arising out of the arid desert, something more akin to Arabian Knights or Aladdin, than contemporary southern Arizona.
As you come to discover the mission church, you will be struck by its uniqueness. To begin, it is a Franciscan church honoring a Jesuit saint (very unusual!), and its founding pastor was an Italian Jesuit who brought with him devotion to Italian saints (again unusual, given the majority of missionaries at the time were Spanish Franciscans bringing their traditional devotions from Spain).
Entering the mission, visitors are immediately struck by its splendid baroque style, with its main altar and two side altars crammed full of statues of saints and angels. Above the main altar is a beautiful statue of the great Jesuit missionary St. Francis Xavier, and each of the two side altars are framed around images of Our Lord and Our Lady.
On the western side altar is the destination of greatest devotion for the faithful coming to the mission church: a representation of St. Francis Xavier in death. Here, pilgrims leave their “milagro” prayer intentions. The “milagro” is a customary devotion common to Mexican Catholics and Native American Catholics, that involves pinning a small metal depiction of a body part or pinning a note or photo to the statue, seeking intercession for a miracle. The blanket covering the statue of St. Francis is constantly filled with these milagros. The statue itself was originally that of Christ from a nearby Tohono mission church. When the church was attacked during an Apache raid, it was brought to San Xavier del Bac and re-purposed as a statue of St. Francis in death.
One of the curious devotions that arose in the early days in this parish and the surrounding Tohono community was to St. Cayetano, a renowned medieval priest in Venice. His devotion was brought to this community by Padre Kino and has persisted to this day among the local faithful (and is also popular in other regions of Latin America where there was a strong Italian Jesuit presence, such as Argentina).
The Venerable Padre Kino, the patron saint of the borderlands and founder of the mission, is a fascinating figure and is one of the greatest missionaries in the history of the United States. He actually arrived in the New World with falsified papers himself, in order to get around a quota on non Spanish missionaries to the New World. He ended up establishing 21 missions in Arizona and Sonora and celebrated the first Mass on Arizona soil with Tohono O’odham in 1691. He went on to become a vocal defender of Native rights, protecting them from becoming enslaved labor of the Spaniards. He is so central to Arizona history that his statue was one of two that the state provided to sit in the Hall of Statues in the US Capitol Building.
Half an hour further south from the Mission is Mission Tumacacori National Park, where Padre Kino celebrated the first mass in Arizona in 1691 and established a mission.
Other day trips from Tucson
The range of options for exploring the southwest landscape expands well beyond Tucson’s city limits. In the town of Vail to the south of Tucson are the stunning Colossal Cave Mountain Park, where you can explore the stalagmites and stalactites and door was has been described as “underground rock climbing.” This can be followed by a visit to the desert church of St. Rita in the Desert, complete with an impressive Japanese-inspired shrine to St. Rita of Cascia. A bit further south towards the Mexican border are two towns not to be missed: Tombstone and Bisbee.
Tombstone epitomizes the Wild West with its preserved Old West streetscape lined with saloons, traversed by horse carriages and gun toting cowboys re-enacting the famous shootout at the OK Corral. The town’s official motto – “the town too tough to die” says it all and it is these same streets that were made famous in the stories of characters like Wyatt Earp and Doc Halliday.
Beyond Tombstone is the former copper mining town of Bisbee. In the late nineteenth century it was known as the “Queen of the Copper Camps” in the southwest and was a booming mine town. Unlike most of other mining towns that collapsed when the minerals ran out and became ghost towns, Bisbee has reinvented itself as a picturesque artists’ enclave nestled in the hillside of the Mule Mountains. The highlight of any visit to Bisbee is the Queen Mine tour, where you can don a hard hat and miners’ headlamp and explore 1500 feet into the mine. Just beyond Bisbee are some border towns where you can experience the rich Mexican heritage and easily walk across the border to experience Mexico directly in Douglas (Agua Prieta).
Other popular day trip destinations include the Town of Oracle, with its Biosphere 2 (an expansive indoor research station that re-creates the various ecosystems of the earth from oceans to rainforests to mangrove wetlands). The town of Sonoita is the heart of Arizona’s wine country, with a number of vineyards and tasting rooms to explore in the midst of hilly grasslands, and nearby is the town of Benson, where the Kartchner Caverns State Park is located, home to the limestone caves that have the world’s longest stalactite formation, as well as the Holy Trinity Monastery Center, a Benedictine monastery set on beautiful grounds complete with a 1 mile wild bird and hiking trail through its property.
CATHOLIC CONCIERGE 
Leave a comment