Noted Catholic historian Carlos Castañeda observed about the Vicariate of Brownsville, “Compared with the other Texas dioceses, the Vicariate was poorer in wealth, but richer in souls to save.”
Growth in the general population and the Church in south Texas continued at a steady pace during the decades under the shepherding care of Bishops Dominic Manucy and Peter Verdaguer. The National Catholic Directory at the end of the first decade of the twentieth century noted the steady rise in the Catholic population of south Texas. With a total population of about 158,000 Texans, the Vicariate of Brownsville had more than 82,000 Catholics, most of which—about 70,000—were Mexican-American.
Not surprisingly, when Pope Pius X elevated the Apostolic Vicariate of Brownsville to the status of a diocese in 1912, he designated the city of Corpus Christi as the see city and St. Patrick’s church on the corner of Carancahua and Antelope Streets as the cathedral for the new diocese. The pope most likely chose Corpus Christi as the seat of the new diocese because he was an avid devotee of the Blessed Eucharist.
More than almost all of the popes of the twentieth century, Pope Pius X had extensive pastoral experience at the parish level, and this influenced his appreciation for the value of lay collaboration and the Holy Eucharist. He had lived the self-giving love proclaimed in the Eucharist in his personal piety and charity. Pope Pius X had also encouraged more frequent communion in a time when some people only went once a year during the Easter season. He had even sought to make the Eucharist more accessible to the young by lowering the reception of First Communion to the “age of reason” which was interpreted to be as young as six or seven.
The erection of the new Diocese of Corpus Christi began with something of a “mystery.” Because all of Texas at that time was a part of the Archdiocese of New Orleans, Archbishop J. H. Blenk sent his Vicar General, Very Rev. Francis Racine, to Corpus Christi to deliver the papal Bull erecting the Diocese of Corpus Christi as well as orders to move the archives containing important documents and copies of letters of Bishops Manucy and Verdaguer from the city of Laredo to the city of Corpus Christi.
The committee sent to Laredo to transfer the archives, informed the archbishop that they “transferred nothing because they found nothing to transfer.” Six years later, in 1918, a large package arrived at the office of the bishop of Corpus Christi from Chicago. In it were a few records and Roman documents of Bishop Verdaguer. Outside of these records there is no substantial documentary evidence of the work of the previous administrators of the Vicariate in the Corpus Christi diocesan archives.
Father Paul Joseph Nussbaum, the shepherd appointed on April 4, 1913 by the Holy See as the first bishop of the Diocese of Corpus Christi, was a 42-year-old native Philadelphian who had been educated by the Christian Brothers and Passionists, had professed his vows as a member of the Congregation of the Passion in 1887 and was ordained in St. Michael’s Monastery of Union, New Jersey in 1894.
The Archbishop of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil had ordained Father Nussbaum. He had spent 10 years in Argentine missions before returning to the United States as Vice-rector of St. Mary’s Passionists Seminary in Dunkirk, New York. He had also served in parochial assignments in New Jersey and was serving as a consultor of the Eastern Province for his order when he received word of his appointment to the new Diocese of Corpus Christi.
The new bishop understood missionary work, and so did the Passionists priests he brought with him to serve the mission fields of south Texas. They were fluent in Spanish and were used to traveling from community to community. They served the new bishop as diocesan assistants, as pastors in the larger parishes in and around Corpus Christi, and in traveling to such communities in Gregory, Calallen and Robstown to build the first churches for those flocks.
Father Nussbaum was consecrated a bishop in the church of the Passionists Community in Union City, New Jersey on May 20, 1913, by the Apostolic Delegate to the United States.
On June 7, he arrived by train in San Antonio where he celebrated his first Mass in Texas at Santa Rosa Hospital. Assisting him at that Mass was a young Father Mariano Simon Garriga who later became the third bishop of the Diocese of Corpus Christi and the first native Texan to be appointed a bishop in Texas.
The next day Bishop Nussbaum boarded the train to continue his journey to Corpus Christi where he met a warm welcome.
He went directly to the newly designated cathedral where he offered thanks for his safe arrival and asked the divine guidance of God’s Holy Spirit in fulfilling his responsibilities as the chief shepherd of the new Diocese of Corpus Christi.
Monsignor Claude Jaillet, who had been serving again as the administrator of the area, led the bishop to a local hotel for a reception and dinner in his honor before then proceeding to formally install the new bishop in his cathedral that same evening. Bishop Nussbaum thus became the head of a Diocese that then included all of south Texas as delineated by the former Vicariate of Brownsville at a time when the only other dioceses in Texas were Galveston (erected 1847), San Antonio (1874) and Dallas (1890).
The Kenedy family offered the bishop, for use as his temporary residence, a cottage they had on the northwest corner of Lipan and Broadway. It was probably the one used by Mifflin and Petra Kenedy while they awaited the building of their larger mansion.
The new bishop believed in being among his people and so he began his ministry with a Confirmation tour in August 1913 that gave him a better sense of some of the parish communities within the area. He, in quick succession, worked for the promotion of lay societies such as the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Corpus Christi Catholic Club for the youth, the Society of St. Ann’s for married women, the Court of Isabella (Catholic Daughters) and the Holy Name Society for men and boys.
Like Pope Pius X, he actively promoted spiritual growth and devotion to the Eucharist by introducing the Holy Hour and Forty Hour Devotions throughout the diocese. The new diocese was after all the Diocese of Corpus Christi, the “Diocese of the Eucharist.”