Wake For A Fat Vicar - Father Juan Felipe Ortiz, Archbuship Lamy, and the New Mexican Catholic Church in the Middle of the 19th Century

Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.A.: LPD Press, 2004. First Edition First Printing Stated . Hard Back. Near Fine/Fine. 6 1/2" X 9 1/4. Rhetts, Paul; Awalt, Barbe - Book and Cover Design. 217 Pages Indexed. Blue cloth with gold embossed lettering to spine and front. No marks or stamps. Dust jacket shows very minor wear to edges. No tears or anything missing. El Senor Vicario of Santa Fe, Don Juan Felipe Ortiz, was so obese that he could not escape a welter of first impressions of this score. Several Anglo-Americans of his day remarked on his girth in their letters and journals. He also had a very fair complexion as some of them noted, apparently amazed by such a quality in a so-called Mexican. He was a redhead as well, as these attributes of fatness, fair skin, and red hair were likewise observed in a first cousin of his who was also a priest, Padre Rafael Ortiz. These family traits had to have an origin, and some of these are found in the ancestral Ortiz family that had come to New Mexico from Mexico City in 1694. When the first draft of this biography was ending with the death of Vicar Ortiz, two word associations were brought to mind. The first was from Oliver Goldsmith's poem, The Vicar of Wakefield and the second from Ortiz himself, who stood out among his contemporaries as a congenitally fat man in his later years. No irreverence is intended in this title, as the obesity was regarded with affection among those who knew him. Of far more relevance, it was a quality for which the first bishop of Santa Fe, the famed Jean Baptiste Lamy, debased him as a lazy fellow, which he never was, thus setting the stage for his miserable last years and sad demise. Juan Felipe Ortiz lived during a crucial and turbulent time in Southwestern history. He spent his youth to adulthood as a Spanish subject in distant New Mexico. Most of his service as a Mexican-educated secular priest occurred during the brief interlude in New Mexico's long history known as the Mexican Period from 1821 until late 1846. Contents in 16 Chapters: The Ricos of Santa Fe, Pastor of Santa Fe and Vicar, a Bishop and His Vicar, The Burdens of Office, Deputy in Congress, Digression to Another Relative, Troublesome Times, A New Dispensation, A Funeral and Controversey, A Problem of Bias, Hatred and the Assumption of Episcopal Authority, Whose Parroquia? The Diocese of Santa Fe, Return from Durango, Oh What a Tangled Web, and Elegy for a Fat Vicar Death of a Mexican Church. Plus Foreword, Introduction and Bibliography. Illustrated with 18 Photographs and Drawings.