What Venerable Father Margil and Father Diaz taught me at the San Antonio Missions Pilgrimage.
- Roland Flores
- 2 days ago
- 15 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
Ave María! On 22 March, I attended the San Antonio Missions pilgrimage hosted by the Our Lady Queen of Angels Priory and walked four of the six old Spanish churches in San Antonio Texas. The other two are downtown and one unfortunately, is no longer a Church (the Alamo). We walked roughly seven miles starting at Mission Concepcion de Maria to Mission San Jose y San Miguel then to Mission San Juan Capistrano and ended at Mission San Francisco. The Texas Missions, often overlooked by most Catholics, predate the California Missions by almost one hundred years. There were Missions in Texas as early as the 1550s, mostly sporadic attempts to evangelize the region by priests from Santa Fe or Veracruz. Most notable is Venerable Mother María of Agreda’s mission, a Connectionist nun and author of the Mystical City of God who bilocated from Spain to Texas in the 1620s and instructed many tribes. The Texas Missions, however, were officially founded in 1689, with Father Damian Massanet OFM establishing Mission San Francisco de Tejas (Texas), from which the state gets its name. This Mission would later be abandoned in 1694 but re-established in 1716. Over the next hundred years many more Missions were established by Franciscan friars from two septate friaries, Santa Cruz de Querétaro and Nuestra Senora Guadalupe de Zacatecas. Over the years some missions grew, and others failed due to enemy tribes, disease, or famine. Notable among these Franciscan missionaries is Venerable Father Antonio Margil de Jesús OFM, called the Apostle of the Texas. Venerable Father Margil was born in Valencia, Spain, on 18 August 1657 and on 22 April 1673, he received the habit of St Francis at La Corona de Cristo in Valencia. Ordained at the age of 25 and he volunteered to be sent to Missions in the Americas. Upon arriving, one of his first endeavors was to visit the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe and devoted his missionary activity to her patronage. Father Margil, who became a notorious miracle worker, labored in what is today the Yucatán, Costa Rica, and Guatemala. In 1707 he helped establish the apostolic College, friary, and Church of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Zacatecas. In 1715 Father Margil came to Texas and helped established Mission Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Nacogdoches (EST 1716), and Mission San Miguel de Linares in Louisiana (EST 1717). He later established Mission San Jose y San Miguel in San Antonio (EST 1720), the most successful and grand Mission in Texas dubbed “Queen of the Texas Missions.” Father Margil was also the most successful preacher among the savage tribes of the Texas coast, converting the community that would later become Mission Espíritu Santo (EST 1722) in Goliad. Father Margil would be recalled to his friary in Zacatecas and live the remainder of his life at the Convento Grande de San Francisco in Mexico City where he died on 6 August 1726 aged 68.
Father Margil’s cause was formally opened on July 19, 1769, and he was given the title Servant of God. His spiritual writings were approved by theologians on May 4, 1796. In 1836 Pope Gregory XVI declared Father Antonio Venerable. By this time, however, his missions in Texas were in ruins. At the time San Antonio contained five Missions, because in 1731 three Missions were relocated from East Texas to San Antonio. Mission Purrissima Concepcion de Maria, Mission San Juan Capistrano, and Mission San Francisco, the original Texas Mission. Starting in 1811, when revolution found its way to Spanish Texas. In 1813 Freemason Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara traveled from Mexico to Washington DC in order to gain support from the US for his revolutionary cause and with the permission of Louisiana Governor William C. C. Claiborne, Lara recruited over 130 US militiamen under the command of a US Army officer Lieutenant Augustus Magee. This group, who called themselves the Republican Army of the North, illegally invaded Spanish Texas and captured the town of Nacogdoches. During this military capture, the Republican army sacked Mission Guadalupe and expelled the friars and Catholic Caddo residents. These friars were eventually recalled to their friary in Zacatecas for their own safety, their superior cited the Mission as being too dangerous being so close to the border with the United States. Perhaps that old saying said of the Mexican republic could be said of our Texas Missions: “Poor old missions, So far from Rome, so far from God, and so close to the United States.” When Mission Guadalupe de Nacogdoches was inspected after the Republicans left, they found the chapel ransacked and all of the vestments, sacred vessels and anything of value stolen. The Republican army would swelter to 300 after news of their success reached the US, and would make an alliance with the fierce Comanche, agitating them to attack Spanish settlements, including the other Missions. As their news of their success spread, revolutionaries from the US and Mexico continued to join the Republican Army and with a force of over 600, they moved to capture Presidio (fort) Nuestra Señora de Loreto in Goliad and but not before sacking Mission Espíritu Santo, again expelling the friars and residents. The Mission Chapel and Our Lady of Loreto’s Chapel would also be ransacked, robbed of anything of value, and desecrated. As fighting continued, the Republican army seemed impossible to defeat and by 1813 they captured the San Antonio area. Again the Republicans captured the largest Mission, Father Margil's Mission San Jose, again expelling its friars and residents, desecrating the Church and unfortunately burning all of the contents of the library. Vestments, relics, missals, breviaries, manuscripts, and sacred texts were all burned in front of the Church, it’s estimated that 1/3 of all records relating to the Texas missions were destroyed during this event. The statues within the church were beheaded, the high altar was used as an officers table, and the statues of Church facade were used for target practice. There is a legend that the republicans were never able to hit the statue our lady of Guadalupe atop the door, the only fully original statue on the Facade.
There final assault on the Missions would be the San Antonio Chapel, located in Presidio San Antonio (the Alamo), formally a Mission turned into a fort in 1793. The Republican army of the north was even eventually defeated at the battle of Medina, at the intervention of our Lady of mount Carmel according to the commanding general of Spanish Royalist forces. The damage to the missions, however, was done and irreversible for a kingdom at war. In an 1815 report by Fray Bernardino Vallejo OFM, Franciscan superior of the Texas Missions, the old missionary reported: “The missions, I declare with sadness, are left in ruins, lacking adequate protection, and are constantly exposed to attacks and raids by every hostile tribe from the north and protestant marauders to the east." Subsequent raids by US forces under James Long in 1816, 1819, and 1820 would further damage the missions, including the total destruction of Mission Guadalupe de Nacogdoches and Mission Nuestra Senora del Rosario on the coast. In 1821 the revolutionary forces of Mexico triumphed over Spain, and the newly independent republic ordered the secularization of the Texas missions and in an act of suppressing religious communities, reduced the number of religious priests and brothers in Texas from twenty three to three. This act against religion was opposed by Fray Antonio Diaz de Leon OFM, the superior of the Texas missions. Father Diaz was born in Nuevo Leon, New Spain and took the habit of St. Francis at the Guadalupe friary in in Zacatecas in 1811, the same friary Venerable Father Margil was once a member and superior. In 1815 Father Diaz was ordained a priest and sent to the missions, arriving at Mission Nuestra Senora del Refugio on the Texas coast in 1817. In 1820 Father Diaz became pastor of Mission San José, and was appointed superior of all the Texas missions. Father Diaz opposed the secularization of the San Antonio missions, not because the resident Indians weren’t catechized, they had been for several generations, but because there were no secular priests to assume control of parish Churches. The only secular priest in the area was Father Jose Garza, a publicly known revolutionary, Freemason, and one of city’s wealthiest men. According to an investigation by Rome in 1839, Father Garza said Mass twice a year, never heard confession, and fathered at least three children by one or more mistresses. After the removal of the Franciscan priests and brothers from Texas, Father Diaz remained alone in San Antonio with one more priest and lay brother at Goliad. The poor Father Díaz knew that his absence would mean the end of the sacramental life of San Antonio. The tireless Father Diaz said Mass at the five Missions, the Presidio chapel for the garrison, and San Fernando parish, tirelessly walking the very way of route pilgrimage.
Despite Father Diaz's pleas, the corrupt Father Garza obtained legislation for the final secularization of the Texas missions in 1823, but the poor friar declined to comply without instructions from his superiors in Zacatecas. On 29 February 1824, however, Father Diaz was forced to surrender the San Antonio Missions by federal troops. Some of the Missions, Like San Jose and Concepcion remained in the possession of their faithful Indian families, others like Mission San Francisco did not, with its large Church being gutted of even its walls, leaving only the original Convent Chapel intact, which remains to this day. Father Diaz still strongly opposed the closure of the costal Missions because these Indians had not yet been fully Christianized, gaining new converts ever year. Father Diaz returned to Mission Refugio, with another priest, Fray Miguel Muro OFM stationed at nearby Mission Espitru Santo and serving the Presidio Chapel of our Lady of Loreto (EST 1749). When it became apparent that there was a faction pushing for the closure of Mission Espitru Santo and Mission Refugio, Father Diaz began to petition for the distribution of the Mission lands to 13 Catholic families of the Aranama Tribe, which made him enemies.The local city council, comprised of newly arrived US settlers, greatly opposed the Catholic Aranamas inheriting their Mission, as they wanted to distribute the fertile mission lands and sturdy stone structures amongst themselves. These US settlers, who were required by law to become Catholic yet still retained their Protestant faith, consisted the largest threat to the friars and their Missions. On 8 February 1830 Father Diaz was finally forced by federal troops to surrender the last remaining Spanish missions in Texas. To his regret, the mission lands were made available to the Protestant colonists, rather than to the Catholic Indian families. Father Diaz however, gathered the Catholic families from the Aranamas, Karankawa, and Coco tribes and took them to a place called El Oso and encouraged them to farm in common there and live according to a modified mission routine. He took whatever he could from Espíritu Santo and gave it to them, even building a small chapel, but this irritated the US settlers who later drove out the Catholics Indians back into the wilderness or further south. Father Diaz and Father Muro were recalled to their friary in Zacatecas but both begged to remain in their mission field. Father Muro was assigned to the Loreto Chapel, where he and the lay brother opened a school. Father Diaz was subsequently sent to the parish in Nacogdoches, despite several warnings not to send religious beyond the Colorado River, so close to the US border. Upon arrival in Nacogdoches, Father Diaz found that the old missions church was completely destroyed, and the parish church of Our Lady of the Pillar was being used as military barracks. The nearby Chapels had all also been damaged beyond repair by Us raids. He rented a small house as a temporary chapel and started raising funds to build a new church and a school. From his first day, the Protestant US settlers in Nacogdoches began to campaign against the Franciscan. Despite this, Father Díaz made pastoral visits to Indians, Hispanics, Africans and Anglos alike. Often to the great annoyance of the plantation owners, Father Diaz often attempted to evangelize their slaves and wrote several reports to the federal government as slavery was illegal at the time. He also reported the illegal yet public Protestant services that the US settlers held. Over the years Father Díaz received several death threats, and these became bolder in 1833, when a family of escaped slaves appeared at Mission San Jose and requested asylum, later converting to Catholicism, it was a long-standing tradition for Spanish Missions to give asylum to escaped slaves from English and US territories. A US Militia, aided by settlers in Texas, assaulted Mission San Jose, whose residents fought back and forced them to retreat, killing one of them. This exchange, among other events, heightened tensions between the Hispanic and Us settlers, which made matters worse for Father Diaz. Meanwhile, Father Muro and the lay brother were recalled to Zacatecas friary for their own safety, Father Muro, who had been in Goliad since 1805, obeyed and became the Novice Master there. Before he left he wrote: There is nothing left for the missionaries to do now but to weep for the many souls left uninstructed among the simple Indians of Texas and to transfers and to transfer the efforts of our brethren to fate desired for them by Lutherans and rebels. In October 1834, Father Diaz was warned by a Catholic US settler, Samuel C. Hirams, that one or more persons had been hired to kill him. Despite being in a previously Catholic country, the Catholics of East Texas were forced to hold Mass in private homes, as revolutionary laws prohibited the building of Chapels without government Permission. Father Diaz had been saying Mass in his own home and in the homes of the faithful throughout his jurisdiction. The Hirams home in San Augustin TX was used as the local Chapel, 30 miles away from Nacogdoches. As Father Diaz prepared to make his way to San Augustin, Hirams hired Philip Miller, a 34-year-old Kentuckian, as an armed guard to accompany the priest on the long journey.
Father Diaz arrived in San Augustin Texas in late October, and after his final Mass there Father Diaz wrote a moving farewell letter to his faithful: “This Sunday, Nov. 2, 1834, I returned to this house, and as it seems to me to be the last day of my life (God knows why), I address my weak and anguishing words to my beloved parishioners of Nacogdoches, bidding them from the bottom of my heart an earnest farewell, A Dios, A Dios. Let them commend me to His Majesty in the state that I am in; saluting them as I salute them, with my heart in my eyes and in my tears. And let it be clear and notorious by this, that I beg, as I do, pardon from each and all the persons whom I have offended, and likewise, prostrate in spirit on the ground, I pardon, with all my heart, all and every person who has offended me, be the offense what it may. I press all, without exception, to my hearts as my beloved children in the charity of our Lord Jesus Christ. Farewell, farewell, farewell; Amen.” The next morning, Father Diaz would be found dead, shot in the chest with his body bruised and contorted, as though he had been brutalized before being shot in the chest. The official investigation of the Franciscan's death dragged for a few months until an inquiry of US protestants and Mexican Freemasons concluded that the missionary had grown so frightened that he killed himself and was brutalized by wild animals. Catholic historians regard this judgment as a calumny against a priest-martyr, whereas Protestant ones favor a verdict of suicide, though it should be noted most modern historians agree that Father Diaz was murdered. In 1926 a German, Robert Streit, published a historical novel on Díaz de León, Der letzte Franziskaner von Texas; the work remains untranslated. The last crown sanctioned Franciscan missionary of Texas, brutalized by Protestant and Masonic US settlers, bent on the total destruction of the faith, died in the same manner as his missions. Father Diaz was the 33rd friar from Zacatecas to die in Texas and the 12th Franciscan friar in general to be killed in Texas by enemies of the faith. He was not the last crown sanctioned missionary to die in Texas however, that title goes to Father Thomas J Molloy OP, an Irish born Dominican friar who served the Spanish missions and found his way to Mission Refugio in 1833 to serve Irish and local Catholics settling there. He would later be transferred to San Patricio then to Victoria TX where he would die at the hands of the Comanche in 1841.
Shortly after Father Diaz’ death, war would break out between US settlers and the Mexican government which would again result in the sacking of the missions, including Mission San Antonio, and Mission Concepcion, which would both be totally gutted and desecrated by Masonic rites. The subsequent Mexican-American war in 1846 would see the missions further damaged. The Later US Civil War would also see the missions fall into the hands of the confederates, then the union, which would further damage them. Vandalism and theft of stone would become a common occurrence for the missions throughout the centuries until 1931 when they were given national protection by the the National Parks Conservation Association. A chief reasons for this federal protection and aid in maitntiance of the Missions is because most of the damage done to the missions came at the hands of US sanctioned efforts, perhaps something President Trump should be reminded. Recently, the White House has targeted the headquarters building for the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park for closure as part of the recent DOGE purge. These missions were formally returned to the Church in 1840 through the work of Lazarist Father Jean Marie Odin and used for the sacraments from then on. Throughout the late 1800s Missions San Jose and Concepcion would pass from German Benedictines, the Holy Cross Fathers of Notre Dame, and Redemptorists before being returned to the Franciscans in 1931. In 1855, the newly ordained French priest, Father Francis Bouchu was sent to San Antonio and was appointed pastor, first since Father Diaz, of the missions of San Francisco de la Espada and San Juan de Capistrano. Father Bouchu worked tirelessly to restore the old missions, working largely by himself, Father Bouchu rebuilt much of the old chapels.
Mission Refugio, which was used briefly by Irish settlers and Father Henry O'Doyle in 1830, then again in 1834 by Father Molloy OP, would be completely gutted by Texas forces in 1842. In 1901, Irish immigrants would build Our Lady of Refuge Church and school upon the ruins of the Mission, which remains a parish to this day. Unfortunately, Mission Espiritu Santo in Goliad would be used by Baptists in 1848 then by Presbyterians in 1852 but was abandoned in 1866 when a hurricane undid all that the protestants had built, leaving only the old Catholic ruins. In 1931, the Mission was rebuilt and became a state park along with the Chapel of Our Lady of Loretto, which had been functioning as a parish since the 1850s. Mission San Antonio (the Alamo), for which the city is named, was one of the few surviving Missions to be entirely corrupted, perhaps we "remember the alamo" for the wrong reasons, being used as a tourist attraction and Freemason temple since 1848. These Missions continue their mission to this day, the mission of Father Margil and Father Diaz, which is the salvation of souls. Father Margil began his Texas mission at an age when most men are considering retirement and relaxation, the almost 60-year-old friar, who had already been tortured, beaten, or left for dead more than once, thought only upon the poor souls of Texas. Father Margil walked from the deserts of Coahuila, through the brushlands of South Texas, the rugged hill country and the swamps and pinewoods of Louisiana, over 500 miles, to bring the light of the Gospel. Father Margil, already worn out from a life of hardship and mortification, faced inclement weather, hostile animals, insects, and reptiles, lack of food and water, and cruel treatment from hostile tribes to establish these Missions, one of which we had the pleasure of praying at. Father Margil lived in San Antonio from 1719-1721, during a time when the pagan Lipan Apache were in a fierce campaign against the Spanish and Church. In 1721 Fray Jose Pita OFM, a Franciscan lay brother, would be killed by the Apache. The poor friar would be riddled with arrows by the enemies of the faith and would be buried in the sanctuary of Mission San Antonio (the Alamo). Friar Jose could be considered the St. Odran of the Texas Missions. St. Odran, a disciple of Saint Patrick, is the first Christian martyr in Irish history, being martyred in 430 and who took the place of St. Patrick, taking a spear to the heart, and saving the apostle of Ireland. Friar Jose, who likely worked with Father Margil and served at least one of his Masses, served as a remainder of the Apache's hatred of the faith to Spanish officials and when Father Margil returned to East Texas, was accompanied by a larger military escort discouraging the Apache from attacking father Magri’s convoy. What is also interesting about Father Margil’s Texas missions is that they are the only assignment he chose himself. He lived under holy obedience and never undertook any enterprise, not even a step, without permission. However, when his term of Superior of the Zacatecas friary was over, Father Margil was asked where he desired to go and thus, he began his work in Texas. Father Margil suffered greatly for the establishment of the Church in what was a hostile, pagan frontier. Father Diaz on the other hand, tirelessly worked for the faith’s preservation, he taught me the true value of the Mass, giving his life to ensure the sacraments were made available to the people of Texas. Father Diaz, forgotten by most Catholics today, teaches us the infinite value of the sacraments and the eternal blessing each of us have in having such access to them. Consider what sacrifices Father Margil made to establish the Church here among the faithless, he truly is the apostle of Texas, and in that same manner consider what sacrifices Father Diaz made while working tirelessly to preserve the availability of the sacraments for the Catholics of Texas. If we had to suffer what Father Magril endured to establish faith, would ee have? What if we had to suffer the gruesome and seeming sudden deaths of Father Diaz and Friar Jose? Would we have suffered the insults and threats Father Diaz suffered while tirelessly working for the faith? St. Augustine said of the early Martyrs: “they are like bottles of precious ointment which give forth a more delightful odor after they having been broken.”
Prayers to Ven. Father Antonio Margil
O Lord Jesus Christ, your apostle Antonio Margil left his homeland to bring the Gospel of Salvation to the people of Mexico and the United States. He endured every hardship and pain for love of You. May You graciously deign to reward your servant Margil by hastening the day when he will be raised to the honor of Blessed and Saint.
We ask that Ven. Antonio Margil intercede for us before God by answering this request. Through Christ Our Lord, Amen.
This prayer for Private Devotion has the Permission of Archbishop Patrick F. Flores of San Antonio, Texas