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Establishment of tlie Dioceses, 1847-1948
"It was on a table I offered the Holy Sacrifice," Odin confessed. The old monastary of the missionaries had been completely destroyed. After spending several days here, Odin headed back to San Antonio. A serious attack of the fever detained him in San Antonio for fifteen days, but he continued his visitation throughout the Diocese until the first week in December, 1850, when he arrived back in Galveston. The arduous tour of more than two thousand miles had taken him almost seven months during which he visited for the first time the area west and south of San Antonio before revisiting the central and eastern sections of his Diocese. Of the Lower Rio Grande Valley he said in retrc:>spect, "As soon as the Indians cease their hostility, the Rio Grande Valley will be quickly peopled and Brownsville will become the depot for all the products of this vast country." 1 ' Pastoral on the Dogma of the lmmac11late Conception. Although Cath- olics had traditionally held the belief that Mary, the Mother of Christ, was free from the stain of even original sin from the very instant of conception in her mother's womb, the teaching had not been defined as a dogma of Faith binding under pain of sin. Evidence of the acceptance of this doctrine is the far;ade of Conception Mission erected in San Antonio in 1731, depicting the Mother of God as the Immaculate Con- ception. After six years of consultation, study, and prayer Pope Pius IX deemed it advisable to define the mystery and declared the Immaculate Conception a dogma of Faith on December 8, 1854. As soon as the declaration reached Odin, he prepared a pastoral letter to his flock, dated March 25, 1855, the Feast of the Annunciation, which commemorates the day on which the Angel Gabriel announced to Mary that she was to be the Mother of the Redeemer. Odin instructed his priests to read his Pastoral Letter on the Sunday following its reception, to have Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, and to sing or recite the Litany of the Blessed Virgin and the Te Dewn. The Bishop's great devotion to and deep faith in the Mother of God is eloquently portrayed in his words: "All who earnestly seek her inter- cession may hope confidently for grace and salavation.... As we advance in this devotion our hearts will be moved to a more tender sense of the mysteries of the incarnation and redemption and we will be drawn nearer to the cross." He closed this letter with the prayer, "Oh Mary, conceived 14 Le Propagateur Catl,oliq11e, New Orleans, December 2 1, I 8 So ; Odin to Blanc, December 9, 1850, C. A. T.
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