In these days of speeding ships that cross the ocean in a few days, of streamlined trains and automobiles that rush from city to city in a few hours, of flashing planes that span the continent almost in a matter of minutes, it may seem strange to sketch the life of a man whose reputation for sanctity is matched only by his fame as a long-distance walker, a foot-traveler par excellence.

Thank you for the privilege of living an hour among the historians of Saint Francis and among his American children. And thank you for the superlative honor you have awarded me.

When the world of a sudden hardens and turns into a kind of fierce mythology, instead of the consummate humanity that God wished, the Franciscan genius, which is above all a spiritual genius, spreads out, thickens, and intensifies, even as do cosmic forces. A great anxiety falls over us and doubles the meaning of our terrestrial mission.

The cord that we wear around our waist should remind us day by day, especially in time of strife, that our mission surrounds us and clings to us in the same way.

To one who studies the career of Fray Isidro Félix de Espinosa, the strangest fact of all lies in finding that so little was known of him for a century and a half after his death. When Don José Beristain y Souza finally issued his Biblioteca Hispano Americana Setentrional in 1819, all his knowledge of Fray Isidro was summed up in these few lines:

Espinosa (Fr. Isidro Félix)—Native of the city of Querétaro, of the Province of S. Peter and S. Paul of Michoacán, of the Order of S. Francis. Preacher, missionary apostolic, guardian, and chronicler of the College de Propaganda Fide of the Holy Cross of Querétaro; censor of books for the Tribunal of the Inquisition. He was as tireless in his preaching of the Divine Word as he was in perpetuating the apostolic deeds of his brethren; and due to that fact was worthy of being termed “the Julius Caesar of the Gospel in New Spain.” For, like that Roman, he fought by day (though better battles) and wrote by night.

Fray Antonio Linaz De Jesús Maria had left his native Mallorca to spend fifteen years in the Franciscan Province of Michoacán. At the end of this time, in the year 1679, he was elected Custodio to take part in the General Chapter which was to be held in Toledo in 1682.

When he left for Spain, he carried with him the idea of returning to the missions of the New World, bringing with him other missionaries who would penetrate especially into the region of the “Cerro Gordo”; he presented his project in Madrid to the General Commissioner, Fray Miguel de Avegonzar and begged for authorization to encourage missionary vocations in Spain. Meanwhile, the time arrived for holding the Chapter which he had come to attend. Having obtained the permission, he preached in Mallorca, in Barcelona and in Lerida, and returned to Villa Coronada where he met Fray Joseph Ximénez Samaniego, General of the Order, who afterwards died Bishop of Placencia. Fray Antonio Linaz talked at length with the Superior; he made him see the needs, of both a spiritual and a temporal nature, of the aborigines which could be met and taken care of by obtaining provisionally the authorization to gather together twelve religious who would dedicate themselves to such a noble task, though a definite decision in the case was postponed.