Jesuit priest Thomas Steele bought his first santo in the mid-1960s, decades before that style of New Mexican religious art hit the cultural mainstream.
By the time of his death on Oct. 23, his passion for the art of the santo — a Spanish word meaning “saint” — had led him to create the Regis University Santos Collection, the largest teaching collection of santos in the United States.
“Father Thomas Steele made a major contribution to the field of Spanish Colonial art history of the Southwest through his extensive research and publications on the images of saints (santos), the artists who made them and the people who used them,” said Donna Pierce, curator of Spanish Colonial art at the Denver Art Museum.
He taught for 25 years in the English department at Regis University but was best known for his knowledge of santos, an art form common in the homes and churches of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado.
“When I look at a santo that I’m thinking of buying for the University collection, I talk silently to myself about what it exemplifies, about how it demonstrates something that’s true of santos, true of New Mexico, true of Catholicism, true of the human search for the divine and of God’s search for our love,” Steele wrote in “The Regis Santos: Thirty Years of Collecting.”
Steele discovered his passion when he moved to Albuquerque in 1965 to work on his doctorate in English. When he won a National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities fellowship in 1969, he spent about a third of the stipend on santos.
The summer Olympics in Mexico City in 1968 sent Hispanic art prices sky-rocketing, and by the mid-1970s, his 60-piece collection began to conflict with his vow of poverty. He donated the works to the Regis Jesuit community and they became the foundation of the Regis collection.
“His influence was very widespread, mainly on the artists themselves,” said Jose Raul Esquibel, a contemporary santero. “The most common book you see in artists’ studios is his ‘Santos and Saints.’ In some cases, it’s in a three-ring binder because they’ve leafed through it so many times.”
Steele selected santos given to Pope John Paul II and President Bill Clinton to mark their 1993 meeting at Regis.
Steele was born in St. Louis, Mo., on Nov. 6, 1933. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1951, and was ordained in 1964.
He is survived by his sisters, Dotty Steele, Marybel Cova and Betty Relling.
A funeral Mass will take place Saturday at 10 a.m. at St. John Francis Regis Chapel.
