Opinion: Franciscan friars say goodbye to Mescalero Apaches

After nearly 250 years, the Franciscan friars ended their association with the Mescalero and Chiricahua Apaches on July 1, 2013, citing a shortage of priests and harsh economic conditions as causes. No replacements would be available. So, on a rainy summer morning Father Paul Botenhagen, OFM, quietly drove away from the Mescalero Apache Reservation in New Mexico, leaving behind a priestless parish, a famous stone church in its last year of renovation, a congregation of dispirited souls, and a rare opportunity for new church leadership to arise from within the community.

Apache storytellers will now add this moment in tribal history to their rich inventory of events that happened during Father Paul’s 12 years as pastor at St. Joseph’s Apache Mission. Listeners gathered around the storyteller will learn that the 18th century Franciscans incorrectly judged the people’s worshipful ways as inferior to Roman Catholicism’s doctrines and theology. Generations of conflict occurred but the people remained faithful to their spiritual certainties and carried them into the future through stories. Today, after hundreds of years of assimilation into the European belief system, many of the ancestors’ teachings survive, and are seen by some Franciscans, including Father Paul, as compatible with Christianity. The combined traditional and Christian values nourish a solid foundation of Mescalero and Chiricahua identity.