Death Comes for the Archbishop

My parents’ library doesn’t carry Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop. This is at once tragic and fortuitous. The fine city of Anacortes is not offering its public “a very rare piece of literature” (The New York Times). The lucky break is that, when I checked it out for them at the Seattle Public Library, I became intrigued and read it before passing it along.

Published in 1927, the story covers the life and ministry of Father Jean Marie Latour, the Apostolic Vicar to New Mexico from 1851 to his death.

The language that Cather uses is absolutely gorgeous. Her ability to tell a story is splendid, and her descriptions inspiring. I never really appreciated the beauty and mystery of the Southwest until I saw it through Cather’s writing. The most touching aspect is how Cather describes the lifelong friendship between Father Latour and Father Joseph Valliant, whom Latour brings to New Mexico with him.

At Father Joseph’s funeral, Cather writes, Father Latour “could see Joseph as clearly as he could see Bernard (who accompanied Latour), but always as he was when they first came to New Mexico. It was not sentiment; that was the picture of Father Joseph his memory produced for him, and it did not produce any other.”

This is not the only description of the way Father Latour viewed his best friend and each time Cather treats their relationship is heart-warming and strikingly familiar. I, too, see a person I love even after years of life have wrought unasked for changes in a way that resonates with Latour’s statement, “I do not see you as you really are, Joseph; I see you through my affection for you.”