Rev. McCarty Helped find Kino's bones.

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The Rev. Kieran McCarty was an author, historian, professor, Catholic priest and the last surviving member of the international team that discovered Father Kino's bones.

He died Saturday — the 59th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood — after a brief illness. He was 83.

The Franciscan priest was a leading historian- researcher in Southern Arizona who shaped local understanding of Southwestern Spanish missions and Southwestern Colonial history.

But McCarty was also an "Irish leprechaun" who liked to have a good time, friends say. Old pictures of the priest show him smoking a pipe, a trademark twinkle in his eye. Other photos show him in front of a television camera, and another in his Arizona Air National Guard uniform.

Fellow historians recall a dry wit and research interests that ranged from physics to religion. He was an accomplished organist and spoke fluent Spanish.

Donning a gray habit, he rode horses during a series of bicentennial re-enactments of the 1775 Anza expedition. McCarty portrayed the Rev. Francisco Garces, the spiritual guide of the expedition, which followed leader and Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza through what is now Mexico, Arizona and California.

Friends and colleagues say McCarty's contributions to Southern Arizona are vast. For instance, it was McCarty who, during his research, accidentally discovered the original proclamation issued by the Irish-born Hugo O'Conor, who as commandant inspector-general of Spain's northern provinces founded the Spanish presidio of San Agustín del Tucson on Aug. 20, 1775.

One of McCarty's most well-known achievements was being part of the team that in 1966 discovered a skeleton in Magdalena de Kino, Sonora, 50 miles south of Nogales, identified as belonging to Father Eusebio Francisco Kino. McCarty's research led to Kino's burial spot.

Mexican archaeologist Jorge Olvera, who led the effort to find Kino's remains in Magdalena de Kino, credited McCarty's work in his writings about the discovery.

Kino, a 17th-century Jesuit priest, is credited with bringing Christianity to the Southern Arizona area. Today, about 27 percent of Tucson's population is Catholic.

In September, McCarty was honored with a special Mass by the Patronato de Kino, a non-profit group dedicated to educating the public about Kino and also supporting his canonization as a Roman Catholic saint.

"We talked a lot in the past two years, and he shared with us that he felt Kino should be canonized," said Raul Ramirez, who is secretary for the Patronato de Kino. "He was the last connection to a group of men who have now all passed away. . . . We are happy we were able to honor him while he was still alive."

Supporters are hopeful that Rome will canonize Kino as a saint in time for the 300th anniversary of his death, in 2011.

Kino founded 21 missions in the Pimeria Alta, or the land of the upper Pimas, in what is now Northern Sonora and Southern Arizona, in the late 1600s and early 1700s in an attempt to turn American Indians in the area to Christianity. The missions include those at San Xavier, Tumacácori and Guevavi.

Though many missionaries who converted indigenous populations to Christianity have been criticized, supporters of Kino note that the priest always resisted Spanish military policy toward American Indians.

McCarty was especially knowledgeable and sensitive to the history of American Indians in Southern Arizona, recalled Diana Hadley, an associate curator of ethnohistory at the Arizona State Museum, who first met McCarty when he was her University of Arizona professor in a graduate class about Spanish Colonial documents.

"He was a wonderful teacher, who brought a deeper understanding of the relationship between native populations in what is now Southern Arizona and its Spanish and Mexican residents," Hadley said.

"He was a jolly, wonderful priest . . . the kind of priest who would bring people flocking into the fold. He had a great sense of humor, loved good food, having an occasional drink. He was always joking with people and really enjoyed a good time."

During the 1980s, McCarty had an office on the fourth floor of the UA library adjacent to that of Bernard L. "Bunny" Fontana, an ethnohistorian and his close friend.

"He consulted on all manner of things having to do with Spanish and Mexican history in Tucson, Sonora and Southern Arizona," said Fontana, who will give McCarty's eulogy at services Saturday.

"We had a steady stream of visitors come to our offices — people from both sides of the border, tracing their genealogies. He was an absolute authority on church records in Sonora — he microfilmed stacks of records."

Sometimes McCarty's research didn't jibe with what some people believed to be their family history. For that reason he joked about putting a sign above his door that said, "History has nothing to do with the past."

McCarty worked in the Mexican American studies program at the university. But at one point he was hired by the Institute of Atmospheric Physics to do research on weather in the Colonial period, Fontana said.

"He was equally comfortable speaking Spanish and English. His Spanish was beautiful and colloquial," Fontana said. "If you closed your eyes you would swear he was a native Sonoran."

The Rev. Chris Corbally, vice director of the Vatican Observatory, met McCarty through the Rev. Charles Polzer, a historian and Kino expert.

"These historians seem to be real characters. Sometimes they agree, other times not so well," Corbally recalled, laughing. "What I love is how they can help us integrate with the people who were here first. The Westerners made a big disturbance, and the missionaries made a bridge between the native people and the foreigners.

"Hopefully, we keep those bridges intact today by realizing our heritage in this land. . . . Our location here in the desert is so vital. And through such people as Father McCarty, one understands that."

Born in Iowa, McCarty was raised in Santa Barbara, Calif., and ordained in 1949.

In the mid-1960s, before coming to Tucson, he served as parish priest in Altar, Sonora. In his Volkswagen Beetle, he covered the same towns of the Altar River Valley that Kino traversed on horseback 300 years earlier.

He went on to earn a doctorate in history from Catholic University in Washington, D.C. His dissertation focused on Franciscan beginnings in the Arizona-Sonora desert, 1767-70.

He spent most of his career in Tucson, at Mission San Xavier del Bac, where he was once the pastor and resident historian, and the UA.

McCarty's publications are numerous. Among them: "Desert Documentary: The Spanish Years, 1767-1821," "A Spanish Frontier in the Enlightened Age: Franciscan Beginnings in Sonora and Arizona, 1767-1770" and "A Frontier Documentary: Sonora and Tucson, 1821-1848." In "Frontier Documentary," McCarty compiles documents including mayors' reports and financial information on efforts such as rebuilding the presidio's wall.

He made film copies of the rich archives created by Spanish soldiers and priests, much of which ended up at the UA library. During that period, he spent hours deciphering Colonial Spanish text in places as varied as Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City and a tiny church in Caborca, Sonora.

In an interview with the Arizona Daily Star in 2004, McCarty was modest about his achievements, and instead wanted to talk about how much more historical detective work remains.

In his later years, Parkinson's disease slowed him down. He spent the past year and a half at the Villa Maria Care Center in Midtown.

"He was a vital part of the Villa Maria community, always in the front row at the chapel," said Sue Alexander, Villa Maria's life enrichment coordinator.

"We have a program called Villa Maria University, and he would come to that, too. Some of the teachers talked about the subjects that Kieran researched, so they were thrilled to have him answer questions about the history of Tucson. He was still teaching us, right to the end."