SAN ANTONIO, ARCHDIOCESE OF

(Sancti Antonii ) Metropolitan see embracing 23,180 square miles in the state of Texas. The diocese was established Sept. 8, 1874; the archdiocese, Aug. 3, 1926. The suffragans include all the dioceses of Texas: Amarillo, Austin, Beaumont, Brownsville, Corpus Christi, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth, Galveston-Houston, Laredo, Lubbock, San Angelo, Tyler and Victoria. In 2001, Catholics in the archdiocese numbered 679,712, about one-third of the total population of 1,949,506.

Early History. San Antonio was a little-known village in 1691, when the chaplain of a Spanish expedition, Damian Massenet, OFM, camped on that site and gave it the name of the day's saint, Anthony of Padua. The first settlement was made and the first mission founded, "San Antonio de Valero" (the Alamo), in 1718, and by 1745 the Franciscans had established four other missions in the vicinity: La Purisima Concepción, San Juan Capistrano, San Francisco de la Espada, and San José; this last was made illustrious by the ministry of Fray Antonio margil. The small settlement was increased by 15 Canary Island families, and organized the first city government in Texas

in 1731. The colonists immediately provided for the building of a church and the support of a parish priest. Under Spanish rule there was a very clear distinction between a mission and a parish church. The mission was devoted entirely to the care of the Native Americans, while the Spanish colonists were organized into regular parishes. Thus, the first parish in Texas, and for many years the only one, was the old San Fernando Church of San Antonio, founded in 1738. The original dome and sanctuary form part of the present cathedral, while the rest has been rebuilt and replaced several times. The grandiose plan of the mission churches never really worked out in San Antonio, and after a few years was almost entirely abandoned as the Native Americans moved away. San Fernando likewise suffered as, in turn, Mexico waged war against the mother country and Texas revolted against Mexico.

During these years of revolution, the Texas and San Antonio Catholics were practically abandoned. The achievement of Texas Independence (1836) left them nominally under the jurisdiction of the bishop of Monterey, who had no English-speaking clergy to serve the American settlers. It was the Catholics of San Antonio, represented by John McMullen, who petitioned the closest (600 miles) American bishop, Anthony Blanc of New Orleans, for priests to keep the scattered flock together. The Holy See had already been apprised of the plight of the faithful in Texas and had also asked Blanc to investigate. In 1838, at Blanc's request, John timon, provincial of the Vincentians, made a reconnaissance tour of the young republic. There he estimated the population at 1,500 with 50 American Catholics attended carelessly by two clerics of the old regime. The first Vincentians arrived in the spring of 1839, and later that year when Timon was appointed prefect apostolic of Texas, he sent John Mary odin, CM, as vice prefect. Odin landed at Port Lavaca, July 12, 1840, and immediately proceeded to San Antonio where he formally appointed his Spanish companion Miguel Calvo, CM, pastor of San Fernando. Gradually the haphazard conditions of the Church in San Antonio were improved, as instanced by Odin's decree that church bells would be rung henceforth only to summon the faithful to services instead of the former practice of ringing them to announce horse races, cockfights, public dances, and the burial of non-Catholics. In late September, Odin visited the old missions and made plans to establish clear title to them for the Church. Three months later, with the help of the French chargé d'affaires, Alphonse de Saligny, he obtained from the legislature the restoration to the "chief pastor and his successors" of all former Spanish and Mexican Church property, including that of the Alamo and all other San Antonio missions.

Odin was named vicar apostolic of Texas on July 16, 1841, and consecrated in New Orleans on March 6, 1842. On May 4, 1847, on the recommendation of the Sixth Provincial Council of Baltimore (1846), Rome raised the vicariate to the Diocese of Galveston, and appointed Odin the first ordinary and suffragan of New Orleans. At that time there were ten churches in actual use, served by six Vincentians and four secular priests. In 1847 he was able to appoint resident pastors for St. Louis in Castroville and for the German settlements of Fredericksburg (1848) and New Braunfels (1849). Ursuline Academy was opened in 1851, and the next year the Brothers of Mary started a school for boys in the city. When San Fernando became too small for the growing population, St. Mary's was opened in early 1857 and remained a landmark in the heart of the city until 1923, when it was torn down and rebuilt after a disastrous flood. Claude Dubuis, who was in charge of both congregations when Odin was promoted to New Orleans (1860), succeeded his compatriot as second bishop of Galveston and was consecrated by Odin in their home diocese of Lyons, France.

In 1868 Dubuis blessed the new St. Michael's Church (Polish) in San Antonio and laid the cornerstone of St. Joseph's (German). The Poles and the Czechs meanwhile had built churches and even schools in many of their settlements south and east of the city. The closing years of the 1860s were notable for the arrival of religious communities destined to play an important role in the fields of education and charity in San Antonio.

Among them were the Sisters of Divine Providence, who arrived at Castroville in 1868, and the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, at San Antonio in 1869. Both congregations have provided higher education for women and both have staffed many elementary and secondary schools and hospitals. The second diocesan synod met in December 1868 for the purpose of reorganizing the constantly expanding diocese. Although the synod was held in two sections, Galveston for the East, San Antonio for the West and South, busy pastors of scattered communities could not absent themselves for long, so only half of Dubuis's 80 secular and religious priests were in attendance. Four chancellors were named for Galveston, San Antonio, Brownsville and Laredo, foreshadowing the impending partition of the huge diocese.

Diocese. When in 1874 the Holy See created the Diocese of San Antonio and the vicariate apostolic of Brownsville, later dioceses of Corpus Christi and Brownsville, Anthony D. Pellicer, a native of Florida, was consecrated Dec. 8, 1874, for San Antonio, where he found about 12,000 Catholics in the city and 40,000 in the diocese. St. Mary's became the episcopal residence and chancery office for Pellicer, whose jurisdiction covered all counties between the Colorado and Nueces Rivers and extended as far west as El Paso and New Mexico, about 90,000 square miles (this remained without significant change until the creation of the Diocese of el paso in 1914). Frequent long journeys over the vast area, not reached by railroads until 1877, and the hardships of pioneer life undermined the health of the bishop, who died on April 14, 1880. At that time there were 47,000 Catholics in the diocese, served by 45 priests and 50 churches. From 1876 to 1880, the Mexican Jesuits had accepted students for the priesthood in their short-lived Guadalupe College at Seguin.

The next two ordinaries, John Claude Neraz (1881–94) and John Anthony Forest (1895–1911) had spent all their priestly lives in the diocese. Neraz was pastor of San Fernando, and Forest had had a long and distinguished missionary career at Hallettsville, Lavaca County. They were the last representatives of the French secular priests who came to the United States in the 19th century, and who laid the foundation of the Church in Texas. They seldom exercised their ministry among their own countrymen, but learned English and tried to master the language of the Mexicans and even those of the various other European immigrants to the area. In 1884 Neraz invited the Oblates of Mary Immaculate to take over St. Mary's parish and the mission district of the western part of the diocese. From 1884 to 1890 he accepted the additional burden of administering the affairs of the vicariate apostolic of Brownsville. By 1894, the Brothers of Mary had completed the first building of St. Louis College in the western outskirts of the city, later the main campus of St. Mary's University.

Under Bishop Forest the Catholic population increased from 66,000 to almost 100,000, and many missions and stations developed into self-sustaining parishes, some of them even able to build and maintain parochial schools. Forest laid the cornerstone of the new mother-house of the Sisters of Divine Providence at Our Lady of the Lake (1895) and that of the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word at Brackenridge Park (1899). In 1903 he blessed the new St. Anthony's Theological Seminary, operated by the Oblate fathers, and sent some of his own seminarians there during the following decade. The death of Forest marked the end of the missionary period in the greater part of the diocese. He was succeeded in 1911 by his coadjutor, John William Shaw, who in turn was promoted to New Orleans in January 1918. Both Shaw and his successor, Arthur Jerome Drossaerts (1918–40), sponsored charitable works on behalf of refugees from Mexico, especially members of the hierarchy. They successfully met the challenge of a growing population with many new churches and schools. Shaw founded the first diocesan seminary (1915) in the former episcopal residence and chancery on Dwyer Avenue. Bishop Drossaerts later moved it to a more suitable location next to Mission Concepción (1920). Closely associated with Shaw was his chancellor, William W. Hume, who served as first rector of the seminary and began the restoration of the four famous missions south of San Antonio.

Archdiocese. On Aug. 3, 1926, when San Antonio was raised to metropolitan rank, Drossaerts became the first archbishop. The new province included all of Texas and the state of Oklahoma, with the exception of the Diocese of El Paso. Its suffragans were Galveston, Dallas, Corpus Christi, Oklahoma City and Amarillo, to which Austin was added in 1947, and San Angelo in 1961. Although by 1908 the United States as a whole had ceased to be a frontier mission, outside aid was still vital to the preservation and spread of the faith in many sections of the South and West. The archdiocese was unable to raise enough priests for its own needs, and was indebted to the Irish and other clergy. In addition, the original Diocese of Galveston received from the Lyons Council of the Propagation of the Faith a total of $309,646 between 1846 and 1901, a sum larger than was granted to any other diocese in the United States. Between 1874 and 1918, San Antonio itself received $34,000 from the same source. The help extended by the Catholic Church Extension Society enabled the dioceses of Texas to care for the thousands of Spanish-speaking Catholics who came from Mexico during the troubled years of the Mexican persecution. By 1950 it had contributed to the Archdiocese of San Antonio alone the sum of $392,388 (not counting $138,446 in Mass stipends) for buildings, furnishings, and priests' support. Also, the american board of catholic missions gave the archdiocese $307,925 from 1925 to 1951, and the Commission for Catholic Missions Among the Colored and Indians contributed $156,750 during the period from 1887 to 1951.

Growth and New Developments. Under the leadership of Archbishop Robert E. Lucey, who succeeded to the see in 1941, a CCD program was instituted in all the parishes of the archdiocese. A Catholic Welfare bureau was established as the church agency to coordinate Catholic social work; a Catholic Action Office was organized and extensive restoration of the Old Spanish Missions was begun. Although the Southern Messenger had been published for more than 50 years by the Menger family and was the official paper of the diocese, Lucey founded the Alamo Register as the official Catholic paper. The Messenger remained as the official paper for other dioceses in Texas. In 1957 the Messenger, merged with the Register to form the Alamo Messenger and its companion in Spanish, La Voz.

The archdiocese also provided permanent headquarters for the Bishop's Committee for the Spanish Speaking to promote social justice among Spanish-speaking peoples in the Southwest and among the migratory farm workers in the North. Lucey combined a social liberalism with an ecclesiastical conservatism. He led the state in a sucessful racial integration of parochial schools in 1954, three years before the federally mandated integration of the public schools. With social activists such as Fr. Sherrill Smith, he was able to spotlight farmworker problems in Texas. In 1966 Lucey brought three federally funded poverty programs to San Antonio.

Lucey took part in Vatican II and began implementing some of the council's recommended liturgical changes, but he refused to resign after reaching the age of 75, as prescribed by Vatican II rules. In 1968, some 51 diocesan priests petitioned Pope Paul VI for Lucey's retirement. The resulting conflict between Lucey and his clergy resulted in the departure of about one-third of the clergy and most of the seminarians. Rome intervened and appointed Bishop Francis Furey of San Diego as his successor. Furey actively promoted the lay movement with the use of the extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist, and led the country in the promotion of the permanent diaconate. He picked as his auxillary, Patrick F. Flores, the first Mexican-American to become a bishop (and the third to become archbishop). He began a pension plan for the priests and lay finance boards. The diocesan paper was reorganized under the name Today's Catholic.

In 1972, with Fr. Virgil Elizondo and Bishop Flores, Furey oversaw the establishment of the Mexican American Cultural Center on the campus of Assumption Seminary. His achievements were many: the establishment of 11 new parishes, maintenance and promotion of a strong anti-abortion stance, active promotion of labor rights, support of the Citizens Organized for Political Service (COPS) program, strong leadership of his growing Hispanic flock.

A year after the death of Archbishop Furey (April 23, 1979), Bishop Patrick Flores of El Paso became the fourth archbisop of San Antonio. Archbishop Flores lost no time in getting to work. In June 1981, he laid out his vision for the archdiocese in a document called A New Pentecost, calling for action in five areas: (1) A call to ministry, stressing the role of the lay ministry; (2) Parish development, focusing on office parish development to educate leaders and work along with COPS; (3) preference for persons with special needs, developing new programs for the poor, elderly and handicapped; (4) reorganization of diocesan structures to focus on service and increased attention to the needs of the rural areas of the diocese; and (5) the development of the Emmaus program for priestly development.

An important highlight of the episcopate of Archbishop Flores was the visit of Pope John Paul II to San Antonio on Sept. 13, 1987. The pope spent 22 hours in the city and made three major speeches.

Other significant developments include the convocation of a synod in 1994 to plan for the future direction of the archdiocese; the introduction of new programs for the spiritual needs of prison inmates, pregnant adolescents, homeless, abused children and battered women; the encouragement of lay participation through programs such as RENEW; the establishment of a diocesan television station (the only diocesan-operated station in the United States), providing 24-hour broadcasting; and the erection of new dioceses. The Victoria diocese was formed from nine eastern counties of the archdiocese and counties from Corpus Christi and Galveston-Houston. Bishop Grahmann became the first bishop. In 2000, four western counties were detached from the archdiocese and added to some from Corpus Christi to form the new diocese of Laredo.

The newman apostolate expanded to all the non-Catholic colleges and universities in the archdiocese. Boys Town of Nebraska established two facilities in the archdiocese to care for runaway and abandoned youth and to provide family counseling. In 1982 the Catholic Consultation center was established to provide psychological screening for seminarians and religious as well as mental health programs. This subsequently expanded to include laity of all faiths. The Catholic Youth Organization provides recreation and sports for hundreds of thousands of youth throughout the archdiocese as well as an annual youth congress and other youth programs. A Marian congress is held each year at the Municipal Auditorium in San Antonio.

Bibliography: Archdiocese of San Antonio, Diamond Jubilee, 1874–1949 (privately printed; San Antonio 1948), although a commemorative album, this is a better than average illustrated record of the foundation and growth of all the parishes and institutions of the archdiocese. Archives (Catholic), Austin, Texas. Archives, University of Notre Dame. r. bayard, Lone-Star Vanguard: The Catholic Reoccupation of Texas, 1838–1848 (St. Louis 1945). c. e. castaÑda, Our Catholic Heritage in Texas, 1519–1936, 7 v. (Austin 1936–58). m. a. fitzmorris, Four Decades of Catholicism in Texas, 1820–1860 (Washington 1926). l. v. jacks, Claude Dubuis: Bishop of Galveston (St. Louis 1947). p. f. parisot and c. f. smith, History of the Catholic Church in the Diocese of San Antonio (San Antonio 1897). bony, Vie de Mgr. Jean-Marie Odin: Missionaire lazariste, archevêque de la Nouvelle-Orléans (Paris 1896). s. e. bronder, Social Justice and Church Authority. The Public Life of Archbishop Robert E. Lucey (Philadelphia 1982). s. a. privett, Robert E. Lucey: Evangelization and Catechesis Among Hispanic Catholics (Ann Arbor, MI 1985). m. mcmurtrey, Mariachi Bishop: The Life Story of Patrick Flores (San Antonio 1987).

[b. doyon/

e. loch]