Under the Episcopal Wing

In McKinney, Texas (pop. 10,000), the little congregation .of the Mexican Catholic church of the Holy Family got special good news. A letter from Presiding Bishop Henry Knox Sherrill told them that the Protestant Episcopal Church had agreed to take McKinney's Mexican Catholics under its wing.

To Father Jose Vega, 40, pastor of Holy Family since 1949, the letter was a milestone-mark in a long effort. When he first arrived in McKinney the congregation had neither friends, priest nor bishop. By last week, Father Vega had assured it all three.

Juarez & Rebellion. Jose Vega began his career as a Roman Catholic priest. But in 1943, when he decided to marry, he had to leave the Roman clergy. Then one day in Mexico City he came upon the Mexican Catholic Cathedral of San Jose de Gracia. There, he learned how he could enter the priesthood again without renouncing his wife.

The Mexican Catholic Church, a minority sect with only about 40 congregations and 2,600 communicants in all Mexico, dates back to the days when President Benito Juarez ordered the expropriation of Roman Catholic Church lands after the Revolution of 1857. The great majority of priests remained loyal to Rome. But 18 pro-Juarez priests struck out on their own, formed a new church. Concerned about their lack of bishops and apostolic succession, the Mexicans acquired an Episcopal bishop, later became a missionary district of the U.S. Episcopal Church.

Father Vega joined the Mexican Catholics in 1945, and two years later went to the U.S. to study at the Episcopalians' Virginia Theological Seminary. Two years ago he took charge of the pastorless flock in McKinney.

Hope & Help. McKinney's 55 Mexican Catholic families needed him. They were mostly sharecroppers, working for six or eight hundred dollars a year. They lived in a settlement of shacks, they had no church building, their children did badly in school because no one had bothered to teach them English.

One of the first things Pastor Vega did was to apply to the Episcopal Church for affiliation--independent of that church's Mexican mission district across the border. Next, he built a new church--a simple white frame building with bright wall paper and gold altar hangings. Then he turned his attention to the children. He took over an abandoned restaurant and turned it into a nursery school. There, three-to seven-year-olds learn English to prepare for regular schooling later on.

McKinney's Mexican settlement is no longer a place apart. Because of Father Vega's work, Texas businessmen donate milk and food to the nursery, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion and other civic groups are fixing up a park for the settlement, and the local post of the Legion has invited Mexican veterans to join it for the first time.

Last week Father Vega was turning to other problems. Recently, he agreed to double as pastor of a Mexican Catholic congregation in Fort Worth. What he has done in McKinney he wants to do again.

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