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Our Catleolic Heritage in Tezas
College in 1913. Six years later Sisters from the community went to the University of Texas. Not until 1915, was application for abolish- ing the cloister made to Rome. The petition was approved for the Cor- pus Christi community in 1915. In 1917 it was granted to the Browns- ville community. 52 A new era in reorganization in Corpus Christi began in 1911, with the coming of enthusiastic Father J. H. Scheid, who was placed in charge of the supervision of Schools in the Diocese of Corpus Christi by Admin- istrator Jaillet. He introduced the departmental teaching system from the third grade through high school, which proved very popular and greatly increased the enrollment. Added stimulus came to the educational work of the Sisters with Bishop E. B. Ledvina in 1921. By 1945 the Academy alone had over 950 day students, after turning away over 100 for lack of room. That same year twenty-five boarding students were refused for the same reason. In addition to the teaching at the Academy, the Corpus Christi Com- munity took over after 1923 many "mission schools" outside the city, extending their work as far as Port Isabel, near the mouth of the Rio Grande. In 1923, the request of Father Juan Canales-later martyred in the Spanish Civil War-presented through Bishop Ledvina, was answered by the Sisters who took care of the School in Robstown until 1926. In 1924, answering a similar call, they opened a parish school in Rockport, which they kept up until 1938; in 1924 also, they took over schools in Sinton and Vattman, the latter seven miles from Riviera in a completely isolated spot. A more successful and less trying school was opened in Beeville, well known as Our Lady of Victory; and in 1928 they accepted, helped by the Brownsville Congregation, a school in Port Isabel, that had to be discontinued in 1937 for a year. It has since had an average enroll- ment of 175 to 200 students, very poor in worldly goods, but richly en- dowed with the grace of Faith. 53 In 1913 the Corpus Christi community had seventeen· members. By 1929 it had grown to sixty-three. When the communities of Brownsville and Corpus Christi were amalgamated three years later, in 1932, their combined membership totaled ninety-one. It had steadily kept pace with the growth and expansion of their work. 54
si1 bid., 69. Sl/ bid., 72-84. "Ibid., 79-80.
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