Father Kino’s statue is at East 15th Street and Kino Boulevard.
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Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino may not be a household name elsewhere, but hereabouts he’s a hero.
You’ve no doubt driven down Kino Boulevard, where this statue of Father Kino on horseback sits at its intersection with East 15th Street.
You may have been treated at Kino Hospital, played golf at Kino Springs, sailed Kino Bay, attended Kino School or watched a ballgame at Kino Sports Park.
Kino, an Italian-born Jesuit missionary, who arrived in New Spain in 1683, founded a string of 24 missions and visitas in what is now Baja California, Sonora and Arizona. They include the nearby missions of Tumacácori and San Xavier and the visita he called San Cosme y Damián del Tucson, where Spain would later locate a presidio that eventually grew into the city of Tucson.
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Kino traveled the vast, empty stretches of most of New Spain on horseback. He was known for his compassion and sense of justice, opposing, for example, the use of Indian slave labor in the Crown’s silver mines.
He is still revered, and his final resting place in Magdalena, Son., where his bones are visible behind glass in the courtyard of the mission he founded, is a site for pilgrimage.
Recently, the bishops of Tucson, Hermosillo and his home diocese of Trent, Italy, wrote to Pope Francis, requesting that Kino be venerated, the first step in the Catholic Church’s canonization process for saints.
