“This was the outskirts,” Fr. Marcos Velasquez, pastor of the Santa Cruz Catholic Church says. “Tucson was there north and this was like at the edge of the city.”
Velasquez is describing the location of Santa Cruz Catholic Church when it held its first mass in February of 1919.
Today, no longer on the outskirts, Velasquez believes the church is the heartbeat of Tucson’s southside neighborhood both geographically and culturally. And in the past 105 years since that first mass, Santa Cruz Catholic Church has hosted countless baptisms, weddings and funerals.
“You see Santa Cruz rising up out of the midst of all these things and it’s sort of like, like a beacon,” says Velasquez.
Santa Cruz Catholic Church The 90-foot bell tower is the most recognizable feature on the outside of the church.
It’s on the National Register of Historic Places, and is considered the largest adobe structure ever built in Arizona.
For Director of Maintenance Fermin Rivera, working on the 105-year-old church is a labor of love.