LAMY, JOHN BAPTIST

First archbishop of santa fe, N.M.; b. Lempdes, Puy-de-Dôme, France, Oct. 11, 1814; d. Santa Fe, Feb. 13, 1888. His parents were Jean and Marie (Dié) Lamy, of old and respected families of the district.

Early Career. After studies in the seminaries of his home diocese of Clermont-Ferrand, Lamy was ordained in 1838. Some months later he was recruited for the American missions by bishop J. B. purcell of Cincinnati, Ohio. He was appointed (1850) to the new vicariate apostolic of New Mexico. His jurisdiction then embraced most of what later became New Mexico, Arizona, and the eastern settled part of Colorado, an area annexed by the United States in 1846 and established as a formal Territory in 1850. Lamy was consecrated in St. Peter's Cathedral, Cincinnati on Nov. 24, 1850, by M. J. Spalding, then Bishop of Louisville, Kentucky. To avoid the perils of the Santa Fe Trail between Missouri and his see, Lamy sailed down to New Orleans, Louisiana, and then started from the Texas coast up to Santa Fe. After suffering shipwreck and many other hardships, he reached Santa Fe on Aug. 9, 1851, and was enthusiastically received by the people. He soon learned, however, of the hostility of the local clergy, who regarded him as a foreign intruder. Making the hazardous 800 mile journey to Durango, Mexico, Lamy conferred with the former ordinary of the territory, bishop Antonio Zubiria, who not only received him kindly, but wrote a strong letter to the New Mexico clergy, enjoining them to accept the new order.

Ordinary of Santa Fe. The need for educational institutions and an adequate clergy were among Lamy's major concerns when he returned to Santa Fe on Jan. 10, 1852. While attending the First Plenary Council of Baltimore (1852), he succeeded in recruiting four Sisters of loretto from Kentucky, who returned to Santa Fe with him to open an academy and motherhouse and lay the foundations for Catholic education throughout the entire territory. When the vicariate was erected into the Diocese of Santa Fe on July 29, 1853, as a suffragan of St. Louis, Missouri, Lamy, as ordinary, continued his efforts to further the progress of the Church in the vast area of his jurisdiction. Lamy, renowned for his frequent journeys over the perilous Santa Fe Trail in search of loans and donations and of additional priests and teachers, was largely responsible for reestablishing the faith in the Southwest. His trips to Europe to recruit more young priests and seminarians met with considerable success, as did his patient handling of a few dissident native clergy and a strange lay flagellant society, the Penitentes. By 1865 he could report to Rome that, where he had found only ten priests in 1850, he now had 37 priests and six theologians in minor orders; 45 new churches and chapels had been built, and 18 or 20 ancient ones repaired; and there were four convent schools conducted by the Loretto Sisters and three by the Brothers of the Christian Schools. Six of the priests were natives ordained by Lamy, who had started a seminary to accommodate native vocations as well as seminarians from abroad.

New priests and seminarians from France continued to arrive periodically, to augment the clergy staffing distant Tucson, Arizona, and Denver, Colorado, as well as New Mexico proper. Lamy also welcomed the first Jesuits from Naples, Italy (1867), as well as the Sisters of Charity from Cincinnati (1865), who founded the first hospital and orphanage in the far West. The extent of the diocese, and of Lamy's burden, were very much lessened in 1868 with the creation of the Vicariates Apostolic of Colorado and Arizona, with two of his best priests, Joseph machebeuf and John B. Salpointe, as their first bishops. With the help of a French architect, Lamy planned to replace the adobe Church of St. Francis, erected in 1714, with a new cathedral in the French Roman-esque architecture of the cathedral in his native Clermont. The structure was still incomplete when it was dedicated in 1886 as the Cathedral of San Francisco de Asis.

When the Holy See erected Santa Fe into an archdiocese Feb. 12, 1875, Lamy became its first archbishop. By 1884, Lamy's age and failing health led Rome to give him Salpointe as coadjutor. When Lamy resigned his see a year later and was appointed titular archbishop of Cyzicus, he retired to a secluded ranch north of Santa Fe; early in 1888 he was brought back to town, where he died peacefully.

A memorial resolution, passed by the Territorial Congress of New Mexico in 1888, paid tribute to the esteem in which Lamy was held by Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish citizens for his personal work in promoting every type of civic and cultural improvement in the Territory. The place of his final retirement later became an exclusive resort called "Bishop's Lodge," where his little chapel remained as a memorial to him. In 1915 a heroic bronze statue of him was unveiled in front of his cathedral; the first governor and major officials of the new state of New Mexico took active part in the ceremonies. Willa Cather's novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), was based on his career. During World War II, New Mexico named a liberty ship "Archbishop Lamy," and in 1950 the archdiocese observed a Lamy Centennial, with appropriate ceremonies in the cathedral, and the founding of a Lamy memorial parish of St. John the Baptist in Santa Fe.

Bibliography: j. b. salpointe, Soldiers of the Cross (Banning, California 1898). a. chavez, Archives of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, 1678–1900 (Washington 1957). p. horgan, Lamy of Santa Fe, His Life and Times (New York 1975).

[a. chavez]