This Texas border town entered the life of the Province to facilitate the passage of missionaries to the Prelature of Madera, in Chihuahua; but over time it became a pastoral care service focused on minorities, migrants and even solidarity international.
At the end of last January the long stay of the Augustinians Recollects came to an end in the Diocese and in the city of El Paso (Texas, United States), which today has something less than 700,000 inhabitants and is known throughout the world for its border with Ciudad Juárez, the Mexican city of 1.5 million inhabitants from which it is separated by the Rio Grande.
90 years on the border
The first presence of the Augustinian Recollects in Texas dates from the beginning of the decade of 1930; Specifically, communities were opened to serve parishes in the towns of Marfa (1931), Alpine (1931), Fort Davis (1931), Pecos (1940), and Fabens (1940). Were communities opened by the Province of Our Lady of Candelaria which, since 1943, were part of the new Province of Saint Augustine, erected that same year.
However, all these pastoral services were gradually closed. Both the last remaining ones, Fabens and Marfa, were definitively closed in 1966. During this first stay in Texas there was no house in El Paso. Those Parishes served were located just over 300 kilometers to the southwest, following the border line.
Arrival in El Paso
Two events, one ecclesiastical and the other political, returned the Augustinian Recollects to Texas, this time hand in hand with the Province of Saint Nicholas of Tolentine. Thus, on April 25, 1966 the Prelature of Ciudad Madera was established in Chihuahua (Mexico), entrusted from its same creation to the Province of Saint Nicholas of Tolentine.
On May 4, the first religious arrived, coming from Querétaro, and took charge of of the parishes of Santa Ana, Nicolás Bravo, Ciudad Madera, El Terrero, Gómez Farías and Mesa del Huracan. Within the Province, they depended on the Vicariate of Mexico, but an assignment of such magnitude implied that religious from any other part of the Province could be destined for the new mountain mission.
And here the political fact came to influence: the relations between the Government of Mexico and the dictatorship of Franco in Spain were of enmity. Mexico hosted the Government of the Spanish Republic in exile and had a long revolutionary tradition, with foreign relations with greater friendly tendency towards democracies or left-wing regimes.
In addition, as a secular state, until 1992 it had no official relationship with the Holy See, nor did it recognize the legal personality of religious entities. In practice this meant that the entry of religious with Spanish passports and arrivals from Spain was a real headache. Permissions were slowed down, when not disabled.
In 1969, the provincial government headed by Candelas Moriones tested the possibilities of opening a house in El Paso, Texas. Diplomatic relations between Spain and the United States are going through a sweet moment and in the US the legal capacity of the religious congregations.
The sending of Spanish religious to Mexico through the United States presented no difficulty. El Paso was the natural border with the state of Chihuahua. Only 366 kilometers separate the US city of Namiquipa, already in the Prelature of Madera.
The first investigations indicate that the bishop of El Paso is not opposed to opening a community religious, as long as they do not intend to open some kind of parish or public chapel, something which he strictly forbids. But the local clergy advise the religious that this refusal to priori very exhaustive, it can be moderated and sweetened once the community is open, they havereal presence in the Diocese.
Finally, on September 6, 1969, the Prior General of the Order granted the Province of Saint Nicholas of Tolentine permission to open a community in El Paso. The prior provincial on that same date he designated the first religious. On October 7, Ángel San Casimiro arrives, on November 2 Luis Larrañaga and on November 30 José María Asenjo.
For the residence of the religious, the Province purchases a family home at 555 Lombardy Avenue for $100,000, $40,000 in cash and the remainder for ten years ($6,000 per year plus an interest of 7%). This is what this property looks like today, the first home of the Recoletos in El Paso, subsequently alienated:
Intense pastoral activity
The religious recollects did not stay still. They were forbidden to have a Parish at their charge or open a chapel to the public; but nothing prevented him from helping other priests who solicited. So they began a frenetic pastoral activity in the service of others.
This fact was crucial, because the main reason for the opening of the house ceases to have felt only a year later. A report from the El Paso religious themselves dated 1970 indicates it:
“The ease of entry into Mexico no longer has a major application. The Conference of Major Superiors of Religiosos from México (CIRM) already has a secret agreement with the authorities of Mexico so that the religious can enter as tourists and, without leaving the country, arrange their papers”.
However, the presence of the Augustinian Recollects in El Paso did not stop having sense. The religious and their immediate superiors of the Vicariate of Mexico do not stop Submit reports on the “strategic advantages” to continue working in the region:
“Across the nation —United States— there is a strong concern on the part of the bishops towards attention to Spanish-speaking people. With a little tact, it would be easy to create a constant source of help for our religious who work in the Prelature of Madera”.
In addition, his pastoral work expanded in an almost natural way. In the first two years and half came to visit and collaborate with up to 31 diocesan temples. they organized and they developed missions, substitutions of sick or traveling priests, sundays attention and confessions, holy hours, novenas, weeks of exercises, Lenten talks.
And they extended their task beyond El Paso, since they reached many towns in Texas and neighboring New Mexico: Canutillo, Fabens, Kermit, Marfa, Monahans, Pecos, Presidio, San Elizario, Anthony, Bayard, Chamberino, Deming, Garfield, Hatch, Hurley, Las Cruces, Mesilla, Mesilla Park, Sundland Park. They even acted as chaplains for the Thomason General Hospital in El Paso.
Various diocesan priests, at local clergy meetings, ask their bishop directly why certain religious are excluded from the administration of temples and parishes, when it is observed that they are working very well. As of December 1972 larger orders begin to arrive and, most importantly, that they do not correspond already with individual requests from priests, but with direct contacts from the bishop.
His first serious commission in the church of San Luis Rey in Chamberino, New Mexico. He doesn’t name them as pastors, but he does ask them to administer them for several months.
In addition, his social work draws the attention of the local authorities, who ask that one of the religious be appointed executive secretary of the Bravo Project, a civil organization whose goal is to improve the conditions of Hispanics, especially the elderly.
The good work of the religious allows them to receive the official commissions of their first parishes within that Diocese of El Paso, although they are not properly in the city without in nearby towns in New Mexico, today belonging to the Diocese of Las Cruces.
They are Bayard (1973-1990), Hurley (1979-1990) and Deming (1981-1993). will follow those of Lordsburg (1983-1988), Las Cruces (1988-2016), Mesilla (1990-2016), San José de la Mesa (1990), San Miguel (1990), Hatch (1992-1993), Anthony (1993), El Chaparral (1994) and Santa Rosa (1996-2015).
Within the city of El Paso, the first parish to officially request that Augustinian Recollects to administer was that of San Juan (1981-1982), which was followed by Cristo Rey (1982-1995), the Holy Angel (1984-2023), Saint Therese – Little Flower (1987-2021) and Our Lady of Light (2018-2020).
The Diocese of El Paso requested the Province to take some other parish in various occasions (1986, 1989), but already in those moments the Province declined for not having new staff to send, taking into account the bilingual characteristics of the place.
Until 1995 there were two communities in El Paso, one in Cristo Rey and the other in Santo Ángel. Since that date, the religious have lived in a single community from which they have attended the two or three parishes entrusted, according to times.
Farewell
In the last Provincial Chapter, the Province decided that in the Vicariate of the United States reorganize ministries, closing those located in New Mexico and Texas. There is a community in Anthony (New Mexico) that serves two parishes and one mission, but the delivery of these ministries is already being negotiated with the Bishop of Las Cruces.
In the official letter of delivery of the ministry to the Diocese of El Paso, the prior provincial indicated:
“We thank God, you as Pastor of the Diocese of El Paso, Texas, and all the parishioners for the beautiful pastoral experience and communion with the Church that we have had during the years that we have served in El Paso.”
The Recollect presence remains in El Paso in the form of infrastructures and this is attested by various plates. The parish hall inaugurated in 2008 in the Santo Ángel on the occasion of the first centenary of the Parish remains with a commemorative plaque and the names of its rooms all correspond to saints of the Augustinian Family.
More evident is this presence in Little Flower, also with a remodeled parish hall and with a whole series of stained glass windows in the parish church with Augustinian saints and saints.
But also in the parish communities there remains the memory of not a few religious Augustinian Recollects who have promoted faith and life among so many families and individuals, the solidarity.
At this point, we mention the reception and care of recently admitted migrants in one of the most complex and hot borders in the world, with the annual campaigns for the Diocese of Cuauhtémoc-Madera or, of special mention, the union of Little Flower with the mission of Sierra Leone.
There is also that immateriality consisting of the experience of the values of fraternity, community, interiority and wisdom, belonging to the Augustinian Recollect charism.
Thank you, El Paso, for more than half a century sharing life and mission with the Augustinians Recollects.