Rio Grande Catholic/Editor

While the Diocese of El Paso was established by Pope St. Pius X in 1914, the roots of Catholicism in the diocese reach back to the late 1600s. Franciscan missionaries founded the Mission of Corpus Christi del Isleta del Sur and the Mission de la Purisima Concepcion del Socorro in El Paso's Lower Valley in the 1680s. The Presidio Chapel of San Elzeario was established further down the Rio Grande in the 1770s. These remain as active Catholic parishes today. The coming of the railroad in 1881 brought a rapid increase in population, which was followed by the influx of Catholics from Mexico during the Revolution of 1910.

Several parishes were founded in the city of El Paso during this time by the Jesuit Father Carlos Pinto who came to be known as "the apostle of El Paso." Among these are Sacred Heart, Immaculate Conception, St. Ignatius, Guardian Angel, and Holy Family parishes. Meanwhile, the rural areas of the region were served by priests riding from town to town on horseback or in early automobiles.

After the establishment of the Diocese of El Paso covering nearly 65,000 square miles of West Texas and Southern New Mexico, Jesuit Father Anthony Schuler was consecrated as the first bishop of the new diocese.

During Bishop Schuler's guidance of the diocese, St. Patrick Cathedral and other new parishes were erected in the diocese. Loretto Sister Lilian Owens, biographer of Father Pinto says that in raising funds for the cathedral's construction, the diocese offered to allow the first group to raise $10,000 for the project to name the new cathedral.

A group of Irish Catholic women, according to the story, met the challenge and chose the name of St. Patrick. El Paso at the time was a major center of the mining industry in the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico, and, it is said, many of the miners were Irish.

The persecution of the Catholic Church in Mexico following the revolution challenged the resources of the new diocese, as Bishop Schuler sought to provide spiritual care for thousands of Catholics fleeing from Mexico, and to harbor many priests and religious who crossed back and forth across the international border to serve the faithful in Mexico, the most well known of these was Jesuit Father Miguel Augustin Pro. Bishop Schuler ordained Father Pedro de Jesus Maldonado Lucero, from Chihuahua City, in St. Patrick Cathedral. Father Maldonado Lucero was martyred in Chihuahua by government troops in 1939, and was raised to sainthood as one of the Mexican Martyrs canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2000. A shrine to Father Maldonado Lucero was erected in St. Patrick Cathedral in 2005.

In the 1930s, the Shrine of Cristo Rey was established on a mountain where the borders of New Mexico, Texas and New Mexico meet -- in the center of the Diocese of El Paso at that time. The massive statue of Christ the King which looks out over three states in two nations was created by sculptor Urbici Soler.

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