PADRES: The National Chicano Priest Movement

Appendix I. ORGANIZATIONAL ISSUES

148 ✝ a p p e n d i x i ORGANIZATIONAL ISSUES P ADRES incorporated in April 1970, filing in Washington, D.C., to give the group national appeal in the eyes of the NCCB, which was also located there. It was structured vertically: board, national chairman, executive director, field director, regional directors, and local directors. Throughout its life, PADRES held annual national meetings with alternating emphases. One year the meeting would focus on action and strategic planning, the next year, on assessing the organization’s successes and shortcomings. Always, valuable information was exchanged. Father Carrillo talked about the meetings: “When we got together we would ask each other, how did you handle this one? What did you do? I’d get a call: how did you gain the support of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare? Or I’d call someone: how did you guys handle the Safeway boycott? What do you do? And so we were helping one another because we were all doing the same things.”1 By October 1971 PADRES had organized itself nationally into seven regions, each managed by a regional director. The national office was housed in three locations in San Antonio between 1969 and 1974. The fourth location was a small single-family house located across the street from the headquarters of the archdiocese of San Antonio. PADRES moved into the house in April 1975. PADRES Frs. Raúl Luna and Juan Romero converted part of the house into office space. It became known as PADRES House and was made available to PADRES who were traveling and needed a place to stay. PADRES intended to form a network of action groups throughout the nation that would function as semiautonomous arms of PADRES. Ideally, these groups would be composed of people from all walks of life dedicated to the advancement of Mexican Americans and would o r g a n i z a t i o n a l i s s u e s 149 be controlled by their own leadership but in coordination with local PADRES members. The action groups would develop their own programs based on the specific needs of Mexican Americans in their area. As of 1971 four action groups were organized, three in Texas and one in New Mexico. The task of setting up these action groups was given to Fr. Joe López of the Kansas City archdiocese. Father López joined the PADRES staff in July 1970 after Frs. Ruiz and Rodríguez made a request to Archbishop Ignatius J. Strecker to allow Father López to leave the Kansas City archdiocese and work with PADRES full time. The archbishop could have refused, and he had at least one credible reason for doing so. In a letter to PADRES, he wrote that he felt Father López was needed to “serve our Mexican-American peoples within our own Archdiocese.” But instead he graciously agreed to “provide Fr. López with our customary priestly pastoral salary of the Archdiocese” in the form of a “check” that “will be sent to him each month.” He added that PADRES was a “most deserving apostolate . . . at the national level” that was sincere in its efforts “to further the cause of more than one-fourth of the Catholics of the United States whom at this time constitutes the most dispossessed Catholic minority in our country.”2 Father Ruiz had this to say about Archbishop Strecker’s support: “The Archbishop was committed enough to allow Joe to work for PADRES full-time. That in itself demonstrated not only commitment, but also a lot of guts!”3 Father Rodríguez added: “Bishops don’t easily release priests to do work fulltime in other dioceses and organizations. Bishop Strecker did release Joe López to work full time with PADRES and was genuinely supportive of PADRES. Strecker had an organization which worked on developing leadership in local churches. He knew that was one of the purposes of PADRES in the Hispanic community.”4 Father López’s title was PADRES national field director and his formal job description included visiting bishops and priests throughout the country to garner support for PADRES and recruit new members, organize PADRES diocesan offices, form action groups, and coordinate workshops. He seems to have worked for PADRES in this capacity at least through 1971. In 1973 he became the first Mexican American vocational director in the history of the San Antonio archdiocese.5 Regrettably, Father...