The Early Years

Spanish Franciscan missionaries established the first church in what is today the Diocese of Corpus Christi. Nuestra Señora del Refugio, the last of the Franciscan missions in Texas, was established in 1793 at the juncture of the San Antonio and Guadalupe Rivers to Christianize the Karankawa Indians at a place the Indians called “El Paraje del Refugio” (The Place of Refuge) which prompted Father José Francisco Mariano Garza to place the mission under the protection of the Virgin Mary. In January 1795, Franciscan Father Manuel J. de Silva accompanied by Spanish soldiers from La Bahía moved the mission to its current location in the town of Refugio and built a stone church. The Spanish priests left the mission after Mexico gained its independence from Spain. Between 1820-30 Nuestra Señora del Refugio fell into total neglect. The church ornaments were removed to Mission Espíritu Santo near Goliad for safekeeping.

New life returned to Refugio with the arrival of the first Irish immigrants. México invited Irish Catholic colonists to settle in Refugio to provide a buffer against the influx of largely Protestant Anglo American colonists making their way to Texas. By 1829, John McMullen and James McGloin brought the first Irish Catholics to Refugio. Father Miguel Muro returned to Refugio and inventoried the remains of the mission property in preparation for its secularization. On February 1830, the mission was turned over to the Bishop of Linares who then appointed the first diocesan pastor of the parish. A small chapel was salvaged from the ruins of the old mission buildings and put to parish use.

These colonists established a second Irish settlement southwest of Refugio closer to the Nueces River and named it San Patricio de Hibernia. The settlers were joined I’ve years later by a second group of Irish immigrants brought into the area by empresarios James Power and James Hewetson.

Under the spiritual leadership of Father Henry Doyle the colonists of San Patricio dedicated a second Catholic church near the Nueces River and named it St. Patrick after their patron saint. Dominican priest Father Thomas J. Malloy succeeded Father Doyle as pastor and soon the church became a center of town activity, with the Catholic faith serving as common ground for the small bicultural community with very different backgrounds. Early church records show that Irish and Mexicans served as Godparents and sacramental sponsors for each other’s children.

In 1839, a Yankee land speculator named Henry Kinney erected a trading post on the Rincón del Oso land grant owned by Enrique Villarreal. The small village eventually took on the name of Corpus Christi.  While Galveston Bishop Jean Marie Odin, C.M. sent priests to minister to the mostly Mexican Catholics in the community, it was not until 1853 that Father Bernard O’Reilly came to permanently settle in Corpus Christi. Father O’Reilly celebrated Mass and administered the sacraments but it took him four years to build a chapel which residents also named St. Patrick.

James W. Byrne, another Irish immigrant and a veteran of the Texas Revolution established the town of Lamar on the channel entrance to Copano Bay in what is today Aransas County and sold land to the Catholic Church in which to build a church.  Byrne engaged a French architect to design the chapel, which was completed in 1858. Called Stella Maris (Star of the Sea) Chapel, it was built of shellcrete, a shell-aggregate masonry.

After the Civil War, Father Claude Jaillet built the first church in the hinterland at San Diego. Mexican ranchers began settling around San Diego in the late 1700s and in 1866 built the first chapel. A native of France, Father Jaillet initially spoke only French but with the help of his Spanish-French dictionary, a borrowed missal and chalice and a borrowed horse and saddle he rode into his new home. His headquarters included his lodging, a chapel and a parlor all together in a 12-foot long by eight-foot wide hut with one door on each side and two one-foot square windows.

Father Jaillet became a central figure in the development of the Diocese of Corpus Christi. From his post in San Diego he evangelized the brush country west of Corpus Christi. Together with Father Pedro Bard, his assistant and eventual successor at St. Francis de Paula, Father Jaillet established mission churches throughout what became Duval, Jim Wells, Brooks, and Jim Hogg Counties.

Msgr. Claude Jaillet was a central
figure in early development of
Diocese of Corpus Christi.