Our Cat!tolic Heritage in Texas
At the time of its erection the parish numbered 140 Mexican families and 10 of other nationalities. The new jurisdiction was carved from the parishes of St. Anne and St. Agnes. The first Pastor was Father Soler and the original members of the first community of Carmelites were, in addi- tion to the three already named, Fathers Joseph Sanchez, O.C.D., Inocencio Gomez, O.C.D., and Segismundo Brock, O.C.D. The American Province, with its headquarters in San Antonio, has grown apace and today its membership is more than 50 per cent native born. The Little Flower school, opened in 1926 in the temporary frame build- ing with two Sisters and thirty-five pupils, grew and expanded. By 1938 a high school course was added and by 1947 a new grammar and high school was built at a cost of almost half a million dollars. "This elaborate group of buildings, one of the most modern in the city," are an eloquent tribute to the founders of the American Province in San Antonio. From San Antonio they have spread their labors in Texas to Pearsall, Dilly, Frio County, and Dallas, where they have established a new Prepa- ratory Seminary for the training and education of young men for the Order and have five churches and two parochial schools for the Spanish- speaking.12• Missionaries of 01'r Lady of La Salette, iltl.S., 1928. The Congrega- tion of the Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette was founded in Grenoble, France, in 1852, under the patronage of Bishop Philibert de Bruillard. In 1876 the Congregation passed from diocesan to pontifical status, and in 1890 it received the formal approval of His Holiness, Leo XIII. The first American foundation dates from 1892, when the Missionaries were received into the Diocese of Hartford, Connecticut, by Bishop Lawrence McMahon, who placed at their disposal his former residence. A large monastery was built in 1894 in Hartford, Connecticut, which has since become the center of the activities of the Congregation in America. In the fall of 1927, Bishop Byrne of Galveston wrote the Very Reverend Albert S. Rasset, M.S., in Hartford, Conneticut, to ask if he had mis- sionaries to work in Texas. Father Rosset promptly replied that the work suggested by the Bishop was not much different from what the mission- aries of La Salette were doing in Louisiana; that he was willing to send workers to the Diocese of Galveston, if they were given a place not too far from Sulphur, in order that the missionaries might visit each other 7 1&Archdiocese of San Antonio, Diam(),rd Jubilee, 1874-1949, pp. 268-269; Official. Cath(llic DirecL{)f'y, 1947.
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