Father Bonaventura Oblasser - Tucson, AZ
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linkys
N 32° 06.420 W 111° 00.464
12S E 499270 N 3552295
Father Bonaventura, known as the "Padre to the Papagos," ministered for 56 years with the Tohono O'odham Native American People.
Waymark Code: WM80N5
Location: Arizona, United States
Date Posted: 01/04/2010
Views: 18
The following is from the history of the Tucson Diocese website:
It is 1911 and a young Franciscan priest is gazing out over the desert surrounding Mission San Xavier del Bac near Tucson.
Father Bonaventura Oblasser is 26-years-old, and he is not where he thought he would be.
His heart had been set on becoming a missionary to China, but instead the Franciscans have sent him to the Papago People in Arizona.
Father Bonaventura immediately set out on a personal mission under the motto of "Every Catholic child in a Catholic school."
He establishes a structure of Catholic day schools on the huge reservation. Each large village with a mission church would have a school that children from outlying villages would go to each day on a school bus.
This is at a time when the government's prevailing educational system for Native Americans was boarding schools off the reservations.
"The family is where the child belongs," says Father Bonaventura.
A staunch supporter and advocate for the rights of Native Americans, an innovator in education for Native Americans, a much beloved priest and pretty good school bus mechanic, Father Bonaventura, the "Padre to the Papagos," ministered for 56 years with the Tohono O'odham People until his death in 1967.
Truly, he is one of the "saints" of our Diocese.
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