Our Cntl,o/i,; 1/crit.agc in Texas
it remained closed for the entire school year of 1878-1879, as soon as conditions improved, the undaunted Pastor again reopened the College. His faith was rewarded. The situation improved steadily after the elec- tion of 1880 and the school seemed to take a new lease on life. Little did Father Gardet suspect when he reopened it, that it was on the eve of under- going a great transfonnation from a boys' school to a major, one- man Seminary. In 1880 there came the Reverend Lawrence Wyer, a young volunteer priest recently arrived from Ireland, who was appointed assistant to Father Gardet in Victoria. This enthusiastic young man was from now on to take charge of the school and convert it into a Seminary. It just happened that conditions were ripe. The only Seminary in Texas then in operation in Seguin had just closed. Bishop Pellicer, who had announced with great satisfaction only two years before in one of his last pastoral letters that seminarians of the diocese had been placed under the guidance of the Jesuit Fathers in their newly opened Guadalupe Seminary, was looking for a place where to put his seminarians now. The reopening of St. Joseph's College in Victoria thus came as a Godsend. It offered the students a providential opportunity of continuing their studies. Probably, it was at this same time that some of the young men of the extinct Guadalupe Seminary at Seguin who had returned to San Antonio attempted to pursue their studies in a vacant room in the old St. Mary's Church at Victoria, giving rise to the legend of the Semi- nary in the belfry tower of the old church. St. Joseph's at Victoria made it possible for them to resume their work under the direction of the magnetic and enthusiastic Father Wyer in a more adequate atmosphere. It is not known how many students were there at the inauguration of the new and unusual Seminary, nor it is known with accuracy how many priests were trained in its inadequate quarters. But from this unique Seminary went forth not less than forty priests who did all or part of their studies in the one-man school between the years 1880 and 1902. Very aptly has a recent historian said that "conducting a major hemi- nary under conditions such as existed in Victoria was a task of extraor- dinary difficulty, and yet the priests who were educated there would reflect credit on any seminary in the land." Five of its alumni, who served in the Archdiocese of San Antonio, attained the rank of Domestic Prelate: Monsignori John Sheehan, John Pinell, Thomas Moczygemba, L. P. Netardus, and Joseph Szymanski. 47 47 C/. CaJl,o/ic Dfrectory, IINJ.
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