John Baptist Salpointe: From Priest to Archbishop

John Baptist Salpointe was born in the parish of St. Maurice de Poinsat, Department of Puy-de-Dome, France, on February 25, 1825. As a young man, his early aspirations for the priesthood were encouraged by his middle-class family (Zerwekh 1962:6). Educated at the College of Riom and completing his training at the Seminary of Mont Ferrand, he was recognized for his scholarly skills and selected to hold the double position at the Seminary as procurator and professor of the natural sciences. He was ordained in 1851 and served as an assistant pastor in a small French parish. In 1859 when Father Peter Eguillon, the second Vicar General of the Right Reverend John Baptist Lamy, Bishop of the Diocese of Santa Fe, New Mexico, visited Mont Ferrand, Salpointe’s life changed radically.10 Lamy sent Father Eguillon to France in the hope of ?nding priests to serve his remote and distant mission in the American Southwest.11 The Vicar described the hardships of life in New Mexico where the scarcity of priests in this large, expansive land caused visits to most congregations to be at best irregular, travel on horseback to be long and arduous, weather conditions to be harsh, and there was danger from hostile Indians groups. Such visits frequently took three to four days, requiring the provisioning of food and blankets (Salpointe 1967:210). Desirous of furthering the Kingdom of God on earth and greatly inspired by Father Eguillon, Salpointe agreed to travel to New Mexico (Zerwekh 1962:7). Along with thirteen other volunteers, some of whom were subdeacons, brothers, and young men studying to be priests, the group sailed from Le Havre, France, on August 17, 1859.

The priests arrived in New York after a two-week ocean voyage and traveled by rail to St. Louis and by boat up the Missouri River as far as Kansas City where they joined a larger wagon train with which they sometimes rode or walked for miles. On October 27, 1859, after seventy- one days from the start of their journey, they arrived in Santa Fe where Bishop Lamy welcomed the exhausted men and emphasized the necessity to learn Spanish, the language of the people, and/or English, the language of the government o?cials. Once settled, Salpointe was appointed teacher of the thirteen French volunteers who had not yet completed their classical studies. Additionally, his duties included weekly visits to the chapels of Pecos, Galisteo, and Tesuque pueblos (Salpointe 1967:221-2). After a year, he was appointed to the jurisdiction of Mora, northeast of Santa Fe, to establish schools and chapels in nearby towns and villages. There he requested the Sisters of Loretto teach the girls and the Christian Brothers the boys.

Salpointe proved to be an e?ective missionary, and in 1866 when Lamy requested volunteers to serve the missions near Tucson, Arizona,12 and Salpointe agreed. The trip from Santa Fe to Tucson was fraught with danger from raiding tribes. Mail often brought news of people killed by Apaches, causing extreme apprehension among travelers (Salpointe 1967:255). Salpointe arrived on February 7th with two other priests and a schoolteacher to continue his work of establishing schools, chapels, helping the needy, and consoling the sick.

When Arizona was raised to a Vicariate Apostolic on September 25, 1868, Salpointe was appointed Bishop-elect. He decided to be consecrated in France but remained in Arizona until a replacement could be found and then traveled abroad early in 1869. Upon his arrival in France, the Bishop-elect went to Clermont-Ferrand where he asked Bishop Louis C. Feron to be his consecrator at a ceremony that took place on June 20, 1869. He did not return to Arizona until January of 1870, arriving with six new missionaries (Salpointe 1967:259-260). His work within his diocese involved teaching and traveling throughout Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Mexico.14 It was during thi