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Father Vincent Lopez, O.Carm., (2nd from left) with the Kino Canonization Delegation
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By: Reverend Gregory Houck, O.Carm.
Father Vicente Lopez, O.Carm., was asked by the Bishop of Tucson, the Very Reverend Gerald Kicanas, to welcome a delegation from the city of Segno in Italy, the birthplace of the Jesuit missionary Eusebio Kino. This delegation is working towards the canonization of Father Kino and was making a pilgrimage to the various missions founded by Kino in northern Mexico and southern Arizona. On May 17th, the delegation arrived in Tucson to visit Mission San Xavier just outside the city of Tucson. From there the delegates traveled to the city of Magdalena in the state of Sonora in Mexico, where Father Kino had died, for the Ninth Annual Padre Eusebio Kino Festival.
The delegation was composed of Reverend Fortunatus, Promoter of the Cause for Father Kino, from Trent, Italy; Gloria Alvillar, festival coordinator from Magdalena, Sonora; Armida Ortega, also from Magdalena, Silvio Chini and Claudio Chini, descendants of the Kino Family both from Segno.
Eusebio Kino was born in Segno, in the Val di Non, a valley in the Tirol area of northern Italy, on Aug. 10, 1645. He became a member of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in 1665. His work as a missionary began in 1678 when he was assigned to Spain’s colony in Mexico and he began work among the Pima Indians in the Pimeria Alta (comprising present-day northern Sonora and southern Arizona). Father Kino died at Mission Magdalena in Sonora on March 15, 1711. In addition to establishing a number of missions in the New World, he proved that Lower California was a peninsula (now called Baja California), not an island as had previously been believed.
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