Vaquero Padre

Eusebio Francisco Kino, missionary, mathematician, astronomer, navigator, cartographer, explorer, rancher, diplomat, instrument of God's work, and candidate for sainthood. Imagine a seventeenth-century man with these talents and abilities, born to a New World by near-death experience. You have the premise for an epic life journey of faith and discovery. It happened. In 1663 eighteen-year-old Eusebio Kino survives fatal illness he credits to the intercession of his patron, Saint Francis Xavier. He vows to follow his patron's missionary footsteps to China. Following ordination, Padre Kino's path to mission takes a sharp turn west, to New Spain. Over the next thirty years, Padre Kino extended the frontier of Christendom west, establishing mission rancheria from the "island" of California to Pimeria Alta in present-day Sonora Mexico and Southern Arizona. He introduced cattle ranching and cultivation of wheat to the southwest. In fulfilling his life purpose, Padre Kino enriched the lives of those he served while his explorations changed the face of a continent. Vaquero Padre is Eusebio Kino's story, as he might have told it.