Dispatches from the history of Hispanic Catholics in the United States

From colonial times until recently, Hispanic Catholics in lands now in the United States have been on the margins of their church. During the Spanish and Mexican periods, Catholics lived too far from the seats of their dioceses. At one time in New Mexico, a whole 70 years passed between bishop's visits.

After the U.S. conquest of the Southwest in 1846 and of Puerto Rico in 1898, these regions remained far removed from the chief concerns of the "mainstream" U.S. church.

As a result, the 500-year history of Catholic Hispanics in what is today the United States has been one of moving from the periphery to the center of the church-to the table where decisions are made, pastoral priorities are set, human and financial resources are allocated. Their voices can finally be heard.

The Hispanics who achieved that feat and others who helped them are the heroes of the Hispanic church.

Obstacle course to a priestly vocation

One major roadblock Hispanics in the United States have had to overcome on their path to the church's center has been the way fellow Catholics frequently dismissed or judged them as weak in faith, lacking in formation, or generally incapable of leadership.

They have risen to such challenges by persevering in a long struggle-first to receive adequate ministry, then to minister to their own people, and more recently to serve the church as a whole.

Patricio Flores, the sixth of nine children in a Texas family of illiterate migrant farmworkers, was a 10th-grade dropout in the 1940s when the desire stirred in him to become a priest. He spoke to his pastor, who told him to go home and pray for six months.

When Flores came back and was told to pray for another six months, he realized he had to seek help elsewhere. A religious order priest discouraged him, but a diminutive middle-aged Sister of Divine Providence, Mary Benetia Vermeersch, showed no hesitation. Asking Flores if he could drive, she borrowed a Model-T and said, "Drive me to see the bishop."

Bishop Christopher Byrne of Galveston, Texas paid Flores' tuition, books, and other expenses so he could attend a Christian Brothers high school. The young Mexican American graduated as valedictorian, went on to the seminary (where he had to shine the shoes of his classmates to earn money for incidentals), and was ordained in 1956.

In 1969 San Antonio's Archbishop Francis Furey decided he needed a Mexican American auxiliary--an option no bishop had dared propose. Furey submitted Flores' name as his only nominee.

When the apostolic delegate to the United States, Archbishop Luigi Raimundi, returned the paperwork asking for two more names, Furey simply wrote Flores' name two more times. "I had to do a lot of pushing," Furey later remembered. "A breakthrough in the Catholic Church is not easy."

Flores was summoned to Washington, where Raimundi interrogated him for a whole day. Finally, according to Flores, the apostolic delegate said, "Father Flores, I understand you have been seen dancing in public." Flores, who sometimes performed special dances with his sister, replied, "Yes, your Excellency, but don't you think that is better than dancing in private?"

Raimundi made him promise he would never dance again.

In 1970, 95 years after the ordination of the nation's first black bishop, Flores became the first U.S. Hispanic to be ordained a Catholic bishop. The ordination Mass at the San Antonio convention center drew 8,000 people, demonstrating how happy Hispanics were to finally have their own religious leader. Nine years later Flores became the archbishop of San Antonio. He retired in 2004.

As the nation's first Hispanic bishop, Flores pastored a flock far beyond the confines of his archdiocese. In that role he sometimes encountered strong criticism, such as when he visited César Chávez, the founder of the United Farm Workers, in a California jail; met with leaders of a demonstration protesting the high Latino casualties in the Vietnam war; or supported an organization of the poor that worked for better schools and municipal services.

Flores helped bring others into the center of the church's life.

Reclaiming a Latino identity

By the 1970s, Hispanic clergy and religious women and men had become aware that their training, whether by design or not, had caused them to reject their own culture. Like Flores, they began to reclaim their cultural identity and to demand the opportunity to serve their own people. It was a hard struggle.

"In my first parish in Los Angeles, I was not permitted to celebrate Mass or preach in Spanish in spite of the fact that 80 percent of the Confessions I heard each week were in Spanish," recalls Los Angeles priest Father Juan Romero.

Jerry Barnes, a Mexican American, was denied ordination by a religious superior because he wanted to work in Hispanic ministry. Archbishop Flores gave him the chance to begin again in San Antonio, and today he is the bishop of San Bernardino, California.

Victory Noll Sister Gregoria Ortega single-handedly worked to improve the education and working conditions of Hispanics in the Texas Diocese of Abilene. Alone, with no title or support from the clergy, she faced down police officers, judges, school principals, and school boards. Some priests attacked her from the pulpit, and eventually the bishop asked her to leave the diocese.

After years of working in the barrios of San Antonio beside people struggling to maintain hope amidst chronic unemployment, health problems, and malnutrition, Sister Gloria Gallardo, S.H.G. not only dedicated herself to serving her own people but also to helping other religious women do the same.

In their lonely struggles Ortega and Gallardo discovered the need to organize their own support group. In 1971 they were among 50 nuns who founded Las Hermanas, committing themselves to "more effective and active service of the Hispanic people." A year and a half earlier, 50 Mexican American priests had founded PADRES, an organization of priests that worked to transmit "the cry of our people to the decision makers of the Catholic Church in America."