‘Apache Christ’ Icon Removed From New Mexico Mission, Shocking Parishioners

The discovery was made by parish staff and volunteers as they opened the church for catechesis activities on the morning of June 27, according to two parishioners OSV News spoke to. A St. Joseph Parish staff member who wished to remain anonymous told OSV News that the Peso board had been installed in the church’s reconciliation room.

Additionally, the staff member said the icon’s detailed frame, which was crafted by New Mexico-based woodcarver Roberto Lavadie, was dismantled and left in a locked storage area of ​​the church to which only the pastor, Father Peter Chudy Sixtus Simeon-Aguinam, had access.

Simeon-Aguinam, who is also pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Bent, New Mexico, told OSV News by phone July 1 that he would comment next week — a statement he reiterated after OSV News asked if he could provide a specific reason for the artwork removal in the meantime. An email sent by OSV News to the priest earlier in the day went unanswered.

A number of parishioners took to social media to express their shock and dismay at the sudden removal. Among them was volunteer youth minister and catechist AnneMarie Brillante, who said on a Google webpage she created for the mission parish that the icon “was taken in the middle of the night while community members were recovering” from two major fires in mid-June that killed two people and forced thousands to evacuate.

“It was a shock for our summer youth catechism teachers and participants to enter the church and be greeted by an empty space where the ‘Apache Christ’ icon once stood,” wrote Brillante, who told OSV News she is Mescalero Apache and a lifelong member of the mission.

Brillante said in his message that “those responsible for the secret removal of the painting include the pastor, members of the Knights of Columbus and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Las Cruces.”

OSV News reached out to Deacon John Eric Munson, chief operating officer and human resources officer for the Diocese of Las Cruces, who also oversees communications, but has not yet received a response to multiple phone and email inquiries.

Anthony Salazar, state deputy for the New Mexico State Council of the Knights of Columbus, told OSV News by phone that as far as the Knights of Columbus possibly being involved in the icon’s removal, “these gentlemen were acting in their own capacity” and “not…in their capacity as Knights of Columbus.”

As an organization, the Knights of Columbus, the world’s largest Catholic fraternal organization, has an Indigenous Solidarity Initiative and is involved in raising awareness of Indigenous Catholics and their traditions through its documentary “Enduring Faith” and its support for the canonization of Nicholas Black Elk, a Lakota holy man and Catholic catechist. The Knights’ supreme secretary, Patrick Mason, is a member of the Osage Nation.

Mescalero Tribal Police told OSV News they “took a report” of the painting’s removal on June 27 and the matter is under investigation.

On her Google webpage for the parish, Brillante posted an audio recording of a more than 12-minute phone call she had with Munson on June 27, in which Brillante said she had “just been informed that the ‘Christ Apache’ had been stolen.”

“Not stolen, just removed,” replied Munson, who informed Brillante that the pastor, the Knights of Columbus and the diocese’s property risk manager had been involved in the change.

When Brillante asked where the icon was, the deacon replied, “That is not relevant.”

Brillante countered that “if (the icon) was taken off the reservation, off federal land, without permission, then that’s called theft” and that the icon had been “given to parishioners of the Mescalero Apache Tribe.”

Munson responded, “There is no such thing as parishioner property. The parish is a corporation…and the parishioners are not shareholders in the corporation,” and “everything in that church belongs to the church…and the building is the responsibility of the church.”

According to the New Mexico Secretary of State’s Division of Corporations, St. Joseph Mission is a national nonprofit corporation established in 1993. Its current officers are all officials of the Diocese of Las Cruces, with Bishop Peter Baldacchino as chairman of the board.

The church was built in 1920 by Franciscan friars and a number of volunteers, replacing an earlier, smaller adobe church that had deteriorated. Much of the artwork in the cruciform structure reflects elements of Apache culture, and over the years the church has undergone improvements and a recent renovation.

OSV News has reached out to Lentz for comment on the icon removal, but has not yet received a response.

However, the brother, who had previously posted a video on Facebook describing the creation of the icon, which included substantial consultation and collaboration with the Apache community, said in a statement posted on his behalf on X, formerly Twitter, that he had “GIVEN the icon to the Mescalero people, who then commissioned an elaborate hand-carved frame for it.”

“What has happened in recent days reminds me of something that happened in the 19th century, when it was not uncommon in New Mexico or Arizona for a group of white men to sneak into an Indian village in the middle of the night and ambush it,” Lentz wrote in the statement. “The group was comprised of men from a conservative Catholic organization in a military town across a mountain range 30 miles from Mescalero. The fact that they were led by the priest then stationed in Mescalero only adds to the shame.”

Lentz, who designed the altarpiece for the “Saints of the Americas” altar in Santa Fe’s Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, added that “from 1990 to 2019, the bishops of Las Cruces visited the Mescalero church and gave their tacit approval to the icon. If it had violated Roman Catholic doctrine, they would have asked for its removal. They did not.”

At the same time, some of Lentz’s works have also sparked controversy, such as his painting of murdered politician and gay rights activist Harvey Milk.

However, no specific concerns about “Apache Christ” and the Peso painting have been clearly expressed to parishioners, said the anonymous St. Joseph employee, Brillante and Brillante’s daughter, Gabrielle Brillante, 23, currently a student at Yale Divinity School who assists her mother in parish catechetical ministry.

The parish worker, whose name was not released, referred to depictions of Christ by European artists, saying: “They painted him as themselves.”

Gabrielle Brillante told OSV News that when Simeon-Aguinam said at a June 11 parish meeting that the “Apache Christ” icon was problematic because it did not fit a Catholic “rubric,” she asked him to provide details but he offered no further explanation.

However, one parishioner (who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation from the priest) told OSV News that five tribal members heard Simeon-Aguinam say during a weekday Mass homily during Lent 2024 that “God comes first. You can’t be Apache and Catholic. You have to choose. You can’t be both… You have to leave those habits and that way of life behind… you have to choose.”

The parishioner and at least two of the tribe members present were “just silent and… just didn’t say anything,” with the parishioner telling OSV News, “I just didn’t feel comfortable… I already know there’s going to be repercussions.”

The parishioner added that “it was well known and much talked about that (Simeon-Aguinam) did not like anything that had to do with our Native American culture.” The parishioner said that regarding the parish’s sacred vessels made from materials favored by the Apache culture, the priest “immediately replaced our cups (chalices) and our basket in which we bring the host,” which were “Pueblo pottery style, and… replaced them with brass… because he did not like them.”

The recent incident involving “Apache Christ” follows the overwhelming vote by U.S. Catholic bishops June 14 to approve a new pastoral framework for Indigenous Catholic ministry called “Keeping Christ’s Sacred Promise” at their spring general assembly in Louisville, Kentucky.

“Many Indigenous Catholics have experienced a sense of abandonment in their relationships with Church leaders due to a lack of understanding of their unique cultural needs,” the introduction to the pastoral framework reads. “We apologize for our failure to nurture, strengthen, honor, recognize and appreciate those entrusted to our pastoral care.”

The five-part framework focuses on calls for healing, mission, reconciliation, holiness and transformation in ministry to the nation’s Indigenous Catholics, whose “journey…to the United States of America has been marked by moments of great joy but also profound sadness,” the document says.

Nearly two years earlier, in July 2022, Pope Francis made a penitential pilgrimage to Canada, during which he affirmed the importance of the expression of the Catholic faith through Indigenous cultures and apologized for the way in which “Catholics have contributed to policies of assimilation and emancipation that have instilled a sense of inferiority, depriving communities and individuals of their cultural and spiritual identity, cutting off their roots and fostering harmful and discriminatory attitudes.”

Referring to the various inculturated Indigenous Catholic symbols and artwork at Sacred Heart Church in Edmonton, Alberta, he said: “This liturgical symbolism reminds me of the beautiful words spoken by St. John Paul II in this country: ‘Christ animates the very centre of all culture. Thus, not only is Christianity relevant to the Indian people, but Christ, in the members of his Body, is himself Indian.’”

An anonymous St. Joseph Parish staff member told OSV News that “the entire tribal community is upset” about the removal of their artwork.

AnneMarie Brillante agreed with this point of view.

“I would say that (the withdrawal) has reopened old wounds that our ancestors suffered,” she said.