San Xavier del Bac Mission

San Xavier del Bac, known as the White Dove of the Desert, stands on the San Xavier Reservation of the Tohono O'odham Nation at Wa:k, the O'odham "water place," where Jesuit Father Eusebio Kino founded a mission in 1692 in an existing Sobaipuri O'odham settlement. The present church was built between 1783 and 1797 by Franciscan friars with O'odham labor and is the oldest European structure in Arizona. When the mission declined after Mexican independence, O'odham residents kept it going. Today it is an active parish serving the O'odham community. Pilgrims still arrive on foot and on horseback, and the San Xavier Festival includes a torch-light parade by the O'odham and Yaqui. It has been a National Historic Landmark since 1960.

Visitors have long described a quiet presence in the church. A Tucson Museum page tells of an old padre with wispy white hair seen at dusk and dawn, the hours when the church's candles were once lit and put out, and a Tucson ghost-tour company says visitors describe shadowy figures near the altar, sudden temperature drops and sounds with no visible source in the sanctuary.