Lamy of Santa Fe by Paul Horgan

Philomène in all the detail dear to a nun that never had Christmas been celebrated at Sandusky with such “pomp and solemnity.” The church was solidly lined with greens, there were three hundred lights, and the sanctuary vault—all Gothic—was sparkling with innumerable stars cut out of gold paper. And the music! The choir had been practicing for two months under an excellent director, accompanied with an old piano as there was no organ.)
    It was the wettest winter and spring in years—travel was worse than ever, when all the rivers and creeks flooded the countryside. Bridges went out, canals were ruined, animals were borne away and those that lived ended by pasturing far from their home farms, and the wheat crop was given up. Barter took the place of currency paid, and parishioners brought produce and goods to their churches instead of money. Machebeuf remarked with irony that it was obvious that it was a land of milk and honey—and added, apropos honey, that Lamy paid him a visit in January and brought him a gift of “an enormous pot” of it. Lamy was adding a small belfry to his Danville church, where it was now clear he would remain, and himself pledged a bell of 400 pounds to hang in it. He was well, so was Father Pendeprat, and Machebeuf himself said his only illness was an “excess of health.”
    What never ended was the growth of the state. Lamy gave Purcell a three-year summary of his records of baptisms, Easter communions, marriages, and deaths, and in each category, the figures of the first year were about doubled for the third year. Machebeuf’s parish grew even faster, for northern Ohio had the lake, and shipping, the immigrantworkmen kept arriving, and more than ever, more than even Lamy himself, he needed a new assistant. None was at hand. When in February Lamy and some other priests went to Niagara Falls to see the great cataract, their route by-passed Sandusky, which came as a “shock of electric current” to Machebeuf, who would have gone along but for two reasons—he could not afford it, and he had too much to do at home.
    But a larger concern brought a shock which needed no exaggeration when the Ohio priests heard that despite the petition of the American bishops and Purcell’s own urgent description of the need, Cleveland was not in all probability to be separated after all from Cincinnati by Vatican decree. It was an embarrassment for Father Rappe, who had been nominated for the mitre, and it showed a typical bureaucratic lack of imagination (such as often operated in central governments and military headquarters far from the field) of the realities behind the requests of those who struggled daily with distant problems. In six years Sandusky’s original twenty-five or thirty families had grown to about two hundred. The need of a bishop at the opposite end of the state from Cincinnati was obvious. Rome deliberated. In time, the issue would be properly resolved with the creation of the new diocese after all. Meanwhile, one had to do with what one had.
    The national news was stirring—Taylor’s army of Northern Mexico had won a great victory at Buena Vista in late February 1847, a week later on 1 March General Wool took the city of Chihuahua, and before the month was out, Winfield Scott and his amphibious force received the surrender of Veracruz and started inland for the heart of Mexico and her capital, as the summer wore on.
    In July there was distressing news for Lamy. Evidently the fact that central Ohio was not growing so fast as the northern counties moved Purcell to decide that after all Lamy should go to Sandusky permanently for city parish work. In reply to the proposal, Lamy wrote a long and eloquent plea to be allowed to remain at Danville. He reminded Purcell that a year earlier when he, Lamy himself, had proposed moving north, the bishop had said he wished the idea had never been thought of, and it was dropped. But now,