The recent release of Franciscan Friars: Coast to Coast has given me to think of shifting my monthly “Into Our Tradition” from basing the columns on passages from the Rule, General Constitutions and Statutes to something a bit more visual. The picture below represents an extraordinary bit of our history, our tradition as Franciscans here in the
Southwest. It comes from The Indian Sentinel, a fund-raising magazine published in the midtwentieth century by the Bureau of Indian Missions of the Catholic Bishops of the United States for the support of Native American Missions. The Indian Sentinel worked in a simple way. If you staffed a Mission in need of funds, you wrote articles and submitted pictures for the Sentinel. They published the articles and pictures then used the funds raised
to support the Missions.

       Fr.Angellus Lammert, OFM, must have been an extraordinary missionary. He served as pastor at Laguna and Acoma Pueblos for over twenty years until his death on the day that people were gathered to celebrate his silver jubilee of priestly ordination in 1952. He made numerous contributions to The Indian Sentinel, contributions which were never condescending in their descriptions of Native Americans, but showed a great respect and appreciation for the people with whom he worked, as well as a great curiosity about them.

        This picture illustrates those characteristics. Fr. Agnellus, at a time when others would not have done so, has trained and is commissioning lay catechists from among the Acoma people so that they can pass on the Faith to the young people of the tribe. As a sign of respect for tribal traditions, the Governor of the Pueblo is part of the commissioning ceremony, and finally, Native names, and their meaning, things not often shared with “outsiders” are included here. Fr. Agnellus exemplified a missionary motto of countless Franciscans since the time of St. Francis who entered into dialogue with the Sultan at Damietta instead of simply preaching to him, “If you wish to be heard, first you must
listen.”