Churches

 While we were in Santa Fe we visited two churches.  This is San Miguel Chapel which is the oldest church in the U.S.A.  It was built by the Tlaxcalan Indians from Mexico in 1610 under the guidance of Fransiscan Padres. The church served a small group of Tlaxcalan Indians, Spanish soldiers and labourers who lived in the area on the south side of the Santa Fe River.

In 1356, so the legend runs, the Spaniards were fighting the Moors.  Battle after battle was fought and lost by the christians until the people vowed a bell to Saint Joseph as a guage of their confidence in his help in their plight.  They brought their gold and silver, jewellery and other metals and melted them in a huge pot.  The bell was cast and it is said that in its tone had the richness of gold and the sweetness of sacrifice.  The bell sounded the defeat of the Moors in Spain and came to ring the birth of Christianity in Mexico.

After visiting the San Miguel Chapel we walked to the Loretto Chapel.  When the Loretto Chapel was completed in 1878 there was no way for the nuns to get up into the 22 foot high choir loft apart from by ladder.  Carpenters were called to make a staircase but they said that it would take up too much room in the small church.  The nuns prayed to Saint Joseph the patron saint of carpenters to come up with a solution to the problem.  On the ninth day of prayer a man on a donkey with a toolbox came to the church looking for work.  He set about building the staircase.  Months later the spiral staircase was complete and the carpenter left without thanks or payment.  The staircase has no visible support and was built with no nails, just wooden pegs, it is an architectural masterpiece and carpenters today are still puzzled at how it was made.  Legend has it that it was St Joseph himself who built the miraculous staircase.  Drew