An award-winning journalist and university professor, Bruce Itule has had a soft spot for the Catholic mission since elementary school, where he often took field trips.

“San Xavier has always been this icon in my life,” Itule said.

His love for the only Spanish baroque church in the United States even inspired him to write a mystery novel, The Gold of San Xavier.

Gold starts with journalist Nick Genoa researching the area for an article in Smithsonian magazine. Genoa soon learns that Father John, a priest who was guarding a recently unearthed treasure chest of Spanish coins, has been brutally murdered.

Suspect Jimmy Longfellow, who Genoa believes is innocent, is murdered while in jail, which closes the cases for police but not for Nick Genoa. While sniffing out clues and writing his articles, Nick falls head over heels for Italian art conservator Rosa Zizzo, with whom he sleeps even while suspecting her for the crimes.



The fiction part of the novel is supplemented with Itule’s real life newspaper articles from Arizona Highways, as well as true-to-life descriptions of the art and architecture, and heavily researched historical accounts of the mission’s origins and struggles.

But, most notable are Itule’s descriptions of the mission, which are almost fond in their tone.

“There aren’t a lot of places on the earth you can go like it,” he said.

One of the aspects often looked over in the mission is the interior artwork, painstakingly painted with colors and styles brought over from Spain, Itule said.

The art conservation project, which is a prominent character in and of itself in the novel, recently resulted in the removal of over 200 years of candle soot from the paintings, restoring them to their original, colorful state.



Each painting is incredibly detailed and distinct, with a great deal of religious symbolism throughout them, Itule said. The missionaries determined that the best way to communicate with the Tohono O’odham Nation peoples was through art. So each piece of artwork, including statues, was fashioned with that express purpose.

“They had to proselytize by art,” Itule said. “It’s amazing that the builders thought that the natives would simply look at these paintings and be converted, and they were.”

Even today, Itule enjoys sitting in on services at the colonial church and watching people who have a level of faith deeper than his own. The spiritual feelings are “certainly much more definitive” at the church than in other places around the world, he said.

However, despite his love for the mission and his experiences writing about it, Itule had difficulties bridging the gap between journalism and fiction, especially during the novel’s graphic scenes of sex and violence.

Itule said that he had to do a great amount of research before deciding on the precise method of killing Father John, via a screwdriver through the eye.

“How would I know how to kill someone?” he said, adding he learned that the method, while certainly not painless, is one of the most quiet and efficient ways of calculated murder.

The novel, however, is not intended to be about graphic violence. Instead, it is a fun vehicle to expose more people to the grandeur of the mission.

“I'm pretty sure San Xavier inspired me even more to be a lifelong student of our state's history,” Itule said.

The book costs $23.95 and was published in 2003 by Itule’s own Thunder Mountain Publishing Co., which he started with a coworker.

Return to Part 1: San Xavier: The White Dove of the Desert
Return to Part 2: Pop! Goes the Frybread!

Credits:
Photos by Katrina Lopez
Audio by Cassandra Miles