First Mass

April 30, 1598

Documentation

• The Spokesman Review
• Marina B. Ochoa, "Archives of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe and 400 Years of Church History in New Mexico," U.S. Catholic Historian, vol. 16, no. 1 (Winter 1998), pp. 23-34

Notes

Franciscan friars erected a makeshift altar in a grove of cottonwood trees. They celebrated a high Mass of Thanksgiving on the Catholic holy day of the Ascension. The ceremony included the Latin Mass, the singing of the Te Deum hymn by colonists, and Onate's verbal declaration of possession of the land. The Thanksgiving prayer uttered was: "Open the door to these heathens, establish the church altars where the body and blood of the Son of God may be offered; open to us the way to security and peace for their preservation and ours, and give to our king and to me in his royal name, peaceful possession of these kingdoms and provinces for his blessed glory. Amen" A more elaborate, and harder to credit, description comes from Gaspar Perez de Villagra's epic poem Historia de la Nueva Mexico (1610), an account by a captain who was on the expedition -- per Marina B. Ochoa's summary of it, Villagra describes the Mass as sung inside "a graceful church, one with a nave of such a size that all the camp at once might be contained in it without crowding," with Martinez giving a celebrated sermon and a drama performed afterward. Worth taking with a grain of salt: this is an epic poem, not a plain log or diary, and a full timber-built "graceful church" at a traveling camp on the day of arrival seems unlikely on its face -- probably poetic exaggeration of the makeshift altar rather than a literal structure. Included here for completeness, not as a correction to the grove-altar description above.