Class Excursion discovers San Xavier del Bac

Professor Albrecht Classen took his class German 430 Crossing Borders/Crossing Cultures on an excursion in November 2010 to San Xavier del Bac, south of Tucson, which used to be one of the many missions that the Jesuit Padre Eusebio Kino had founded in the late seventeenth century. The class focused on the contributions by the German speaking Jesuit missionaries in eighteenth-century Sonora (later Arizona), so the visit of that mission church was a true highlight of our semester. After all, San Xavier del Bac is rightly claimed to be the oldest church building in Southern Arizona, and it also stands out as the most beautiful one in the entire region.