Preserving the White Dove

Financial Support Remains Crucial for Mission San Xavier del Bac

By Dave Perry

Many might see Mission San Xavier del Bac as “that quaint little church on the edge of the city,” acknowledges Miles Green, executive director of Patronato San Xavier.

He suggests a deeper look at the White Dove of the Desert.

“We’re actually a significant piece of our nation’s heritage,” said Green, head of the nonprofit organization that preserves the National Historic Landmark. “The Mission is acting as an economic driver for the community of Tucson and Southern Arizona.”

Green estimates more than 250,000 people visit the Mission each year, in the community of Wa:k south of Tucson. Guests, astonished by its grandeur and sanctity, “walk out with their mouths open,” he said. 

Over the decades, the Mission’s exterior has been cleaned, conserved and replastered. And now, Green said, Patronato San Xavier is “closing in on what we’re calling the last decade of our large-scale projects.”

Inside, the Mission church “still has intact much of the interior artwork that at other locations has simply been lost over time,” Green said. Centuries of candle grease and grime have been removed. Fragile paintings on dry plaster are preserved. While interior care “will be never-ending, we’re trying to move toward a routine that sees every surface revisited on about a seven-year circuit,” he said. “We’re two-thirds of the way of keeping on top of that schedule.”

“San Xavier is a fascinating place because it’s so complex,” said Starr Herr-Cardillo, Patronato’s conservation project manager. “It’s a place that’s significant to so many different people, and that may have both good and bad connotations, but as a physical object it’s an incredible testament to the history here.”

The current preservation focus is the 228-year-old retablo façade, the highly ornamented, heavily weathered element surrounding the church’s large front doors. This work “crosses the boundaries between art conservation and construction,” Green said.

Herr-Cardillo leads an incredible team. Tim Lewis, who began as an apprentice on the first conservation of the interior art in the 1990s, and his wife, Matilde Rubio are senior conservators. The team also includes conservator technicians, one a fulltime employee of the Patronato and two visiting specialists. They work to uncover the retablo’s original plaster, search for paint fragments and seek solutions to rehabilitate eroded columns and statuary. 

The team has been able to discern a variety of paint applications used, in which the colors were blended and applied in ways hard to identify from the ground because so little remains. 

“My favorite part about this work is that, as a team, you are constantly making and sharing the smallest observations…looking at how material reacts, developing a clearer understanding of what you’re looking at through the most minute observations and then sharing that information together until you start to see the bigger picture,” Herr-Cardillo said.

Herr-Cardillo and her team have presented on their Mission work globally, including at the International Council of Museums-Committee for Conservation in Valencia, Spain in 2023. 

“The more we are able to generate research through our projects and share what we are learning, the better,” she said. “We really want to engage in regional, national and global dialogues around conservation best practices through our work.”

All of this important work needs financial support. In FY 2022-23, Patronato San Xavier spent $700,000 on conservation and preservation. The retablo project is much bigger. With this work just beginning, Green is newly uncertain about the fate of a $749,000 National Park Service grant, announced in 2024, for the work.

So Patronato, and those who love the Mission, find resources. Over the years, the Silver & Turquoise Board of Hostesses has given roughly $1 million to the Mission. The group was created to promote, support and encourage the preservation of Tucson’s historical traditions and diverse cultural heritage. The Silver & Turquoise annual ball, the group’s signature event, will be held Saturday, May 3. 

Silver & Turquoise Board of Hostesses “has chosen to see the preservation work as the kind of heritage project they want to help support,” a grateful Green said. 

Modern-day worshippers whose ancestors built the Mission have “a deep respect and love” for it. Centuries ago, their ancestors walked off the job at San Xavier “because nobody was paying them to finish the East Tower,” Green said. At a cost of $1.4 million, the East Tower’s preservation was completed in 2023.

Lastly, Green credits Patronato’s docent program for engaging “a constituency really across the country” that gives support. People give so others can preserve. Each day, each year, the Mission becomes more “a representation of its former glory.”

Pictured: “White Dove of the Desert: San Xavier Mission Del Bac” by Mary Schaefer. Courtesy of the Schaefer Family