Death Comes for the Archbishop Summary

In 1848, shortly after the conclusion of the war that made present-day New Mexico a United States territory, a group of high-ranking Catholic officials discuss the new vicariate they hope to found in this region. During this meeting in Rome, Ohio-based Bishop Ferrand pleads with Cardinal Garcia Maria de Allande to make Frenchman Jean-Marie Latour, a vicar in Ferrand’s diocese, the new Bishop for this southwestern diocese. Allande is hesitant, but he agrees that Latour’s youth and persistence make him the right man for the job.

Now, it is 1851, and Latour is lost in the desert. After heading on a long journey to prove his legitimacy to the people of New Mexico, Latour has gotten stranded; he worries that he and his horses will die of thirst. Fortunately, after praying to a cruciform tree, Latour stumbles upon a small settlement. The people there take him in, and the village’s commitment to Catholic rites even without a priest renews Latour’s faith. Latour returns home to Santa Fé, where his old friend Vicar Joseph Vaillant has endeared himself to the locals. Still, Vaillant misses France.

A few months later, Vaillant makes his way back to Santa Fé from the neighboring city of Albuquerque. During his journey, Vaillant stops to stay with Manuel Lujon, a wealthy Mexican man who hopes the vicar can sanctify his servants’ marriages and baptize their children. When Vaillant insists that priests should have no material concerns, Lujon warns him that many priests in the region feel differently. Before he leaves, Vaillant asks Lujon to give him his beloved mules Angelica and Contento, which Lujon reluctantly does.

Now it’s almost summer, and Latour and Vaillant are caught in a storm on their way to the town of Mora. When they see a house on the side of the road, they stop to take refuge, and an American named Buck Scales lets them in. But no sooner have they entered the house than Magdalena, Buck’s wife, warns them that Buck will murder them. The priests escape, and they later meet Magdalena in Mora. Fortunately, Magdalena spots an old friend there—Kit Carson, the famed explorer. Carson takes Magdalena home to recuperate with his wife; once she feels better, she will go work with Latour in Santa Fé. In the meantime, however, Latour needs to make the long trip to Baltimore for the Provincial Council.

When Latour returns to the Southwest after the Council, he and Vaillant make their first journey around the vicarate. First, they go to Albuquerque, where they find that the priest there—Father Gallegos—is living a lavish lifestyle, filled with parties and gambling and other unpriestly activities. The two friends continue onto the village of Isleta, where they meet a kindly old churchman named Father Jesus. Jesus keeps a number of parrots, and Latour is gratified to see that all of Jesus’ indigenous parishioners trust him.

Latour then sets off to Ácoma, led by his guide Jacinto, of the Pecos tribe. When they reach Ácoma, Latour is amazed that the entire town exists atop a flat stone mesa. Jacinto explains that this was the only way the Ácoma could survive attacks from rival tribes. Though there is a giant church on the rock, Latour cannot help feeling that there is something overwhelming about the whole place. Latour also learns the story of Baltazar Montoya, a tyrannical priest who governed Ácoma in the 1700s; eventually, his greed and cruelty led the Ácoma people to revolt. At the end of his trip, Latour formally suspends Father Gallegos from his role in Albuquerque.

A month later, Latour learns that Vaillant, who is always sick, has fallen ill on a trip to Las Vegas. Latour rushes to see Vaillant, but the trip is perilous—he gets stuck in a snowstorm and is saved only by Jacinto’s knowledge of a nearby cave where they can shelter. Because the cave is a religious site for the Pecos tribe, Jacinto implores Latour to forget his time there, though Latour remains deeply affected by the ordeal. As the two men travel together, Latour reflects on the many harms white settlers have brought to indigenous tribes.

Vaillant survives his illness, and he and Latour at last make their way to Taos, where the infamous priest Antonio Jose Martínez lives. Martínez distrusts the new American government, he refuses to abide by the priestly vow of celibacy, and he frequently blames his own bad actions on indigenous men in his community. With his miserly friend Father Marino Lucero and Lucero’s nephew Trinidad, Martínez also embezzles a great deal of money. Within a year, Martínez, chafing under Latour’s new rules, breaks off and forms his own church. But in short order, first Martinez and then Lucero fall ill and die. When Vaillant visits Lucero, hoping to administer the final sacrament to the old priest, he sees the dying man imagining Martinez being tortured in hell.

Now that Latour is growing older, he wants to leave something behind—a church in the old French style. His partner in this venture is Don Antonio Olivares, a wealthy and well-respected ranchero; Latour is also close with Isabella, Olivares’s wife, and with Ines, his daughter. But when Olivares suddenly dies of a heart attack, his brothers contest his will, arguing that they should get the money instead of Isabella on the grounds that Isabella is not old enough to actually be Ines’s mother. At first, Isabella is too proud of her youthful looks to reveal her true age in court—but after some nudging from Vaillant, she comes clean about her age and preserves her inheritance (which includes funds for Latour’s new cathedral).

More time passes, and the Gadsden Purchase enlarges Latour’s territory once again. Vaillant is eager to do missionary work in the towns near Tucson, so Latour approves the request, although he is sad to be apart from his trusted vicar. However, after a visit to his old friend Eusabio, a prominent Navajo rancher, Latour decides to call Vaillant back home again. Latour reflects that Vaillant is much more social than he will ever be.

Just a few weeks after Vaillant returns, Latour gets a letter informing him that gold has been discovered in Colorado—and that miners, rushing to get rich, are drinking and gambling like mad. Latour knows he needs to dispatch a priest to Denver, and that Vaillant is the man for the job, even if it means he will never return to Santa Fé. But though Latour never openly voices his grief at letting his best friend go, he insists that Vaillant take both Angelica and Contento: “they have worked long together.”

By 1888, Vaillant has died, after being made the first bishop of Colorado; Latour, having been named an archbishop, is in retirement. In his final days, Latour recalls his friendship with Vaillant and tends to his garden of fruit trees. At Eusabio’s urging, he also meets with Manuelito, a Navajo leader who delineates just how destructive American settlement has been for his tribe. In particular, Manuelito names Kit Carson, now dead, as the cruelest combatant. Latour hopes that indigenous tribes will survive beyond his lifetime, and that the U.S. will “restore” the land that indigenous peoples have occupied for centuries.

Soon after, Latour dies, murmuring his final words to Vaillant. The next day, he is buried in the cathedral he built.