SAN ANTONIO • St. Rafael Guízar y Valencia, a saint with a personal connection to San Antonio, was honored on the day of his canonization in Rome on Oct. 15 with a special Mass at San Fernando Cathedral, where he preached while in exile from his native Mexico during the late 1920s.
    The Mass was concelebrated by Archbishop José H. Gomez and Archbishop Emeritus Patrick F. Flores. Also participating were Bishop Edmond Carmody of Corpus Christi; Father David Garcia, rector of San Fernando; and Father James J. Empereur, SJ, parochial vicar at the cathedral, as well as a large assembly of priests and deacons.
    As a priest and later as bishop of Veracruz-Jalapa, México (1919-1938), St. Rafael was known for his work among the poor and oppressed during a period of intense religious persecution of the Catholic Church in Mexico.     Forced to flee his country for a time because of this, he spent several years in South Texas, preaching missions in San Antonio at Immaculate Heart of Mary Church, as well as at the cathedral. He later lived in Austin at Our Lady of Guadalupe.
    He is the first bishop born in the Americas to be declared a saint and was a member of the Knights of Columbus, with local Knights serving as honor guard for the entrance procession at the cathedral Mass.

    Seated in several rows at the front of the cathedral were 40 members of the Guízar and Valencia families from Mexico and San Antonio, who were unable to attend the canonization ceremonies in Rome. Among them was Tito Guízar Jr. of San Antonio, son of the famous Mexican singer, Tito Guízar, and great-great-nephew of the saint.

    A large color portrait of their relative as bishop, a gift to the archdiocese by the Guízar family, stood adjacent to the pulpit. Several hundred persons filled the 275-year-old cathedral, with the overflow standing along its limestone walls to attend the Mass in honor of the newly canonized saint whose feet had once trod its floors.

    The Gospel reading from St. Mark was the story of the wealthy man who was invited to sell all he owned and follow Jesus, and Archbishop Emeritus Flores drew on this for his homily. He noted that St. Rafael, born in 1878 to a wealthy but pious family, used his wealth to help build orphanages, clinics and a seminary, and was known for giving away all he had to help those in need, even selling his beautiful pectoral cross of gold encrusted with diamonds to help the poor.

    Despite government threats against his life, he at first refused to leave Mexico, but was finally convinced by the people and priests to do so. “I know,” he said, “the persecutors will be dead and gone before long; the church is not going to be gone.”

    Archbishop Flores told of the bishop spending a few days in San Antonio and living briefly at the convent of the Sisters of Divine Providence in Castroville before moving to Austin, where he was at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church for over two years. He spent this time preaching missions, confirming, baptizing and always collecting funds for his beloved poor.

    When the Depression struck and donations became scarce, he sold his episcopal ring to the bishop of Oklahoma — again, to help those in need. In an unusual twist of fate, this ring later found its way to Archbishop Flores as an expression of gratitude from the family of a man the archbishop had ministered to in Houston.

    After the man’s death, his sons and his daughter, a Dominican nun, visited Archbishop Flores at the chancery. They presented him with a ring their father had wanted the archbishop to have and knew only that it had belonged to a Mexican bishop. Archbishop Flores was later amazed when it was discovered it had belonged to Bishop Guízar y Valencia, to whom he had had a special devotion since his seminary years. (Archbishop Flores’ pastor as a seminarian had been Father Tomás Cuevas, OMI, who had known the bishop during his stay in Austin in 1927.)

    Over the years, Archbishop Flores related, he has continued to lead pilgrimages to the cathedral at Jalapa, Vera Cruz, where the saint’s body remains in a glass casket for public viewing, his body having been found uncorrupted 12 years after his death.

    “Blessed be God who gave us this great man,” said the archbishop. “And blessed be this great man for all that he has taught us.” He noted that one of the lessons to be learned from the new saint is that the day’s reading from St. Mark applies not just to the materially rich, “but to everyone who, in some way or another, has something they can share with others.”

    At the conclusion of the Mass, Archbishop Gomez noted that Pope Benedict XVI had said that St. Rafael will be remembered as “the bishop for the poor” and also for his devotion to priestly formation. As such, the archbishop asked for his intercession “for the priests and for the seminarians of the Archdiocese of San Antonio and the seminarians all over the world.”

    He then blessed those in attendance, holding a fragment of St. Rafael’s bone contained in a small gold reliquary, a first class relic of the saint sent from the cathedral at Jalapa. Following the Mass, those present formed a line winding through the center of the cathedral in order to venerate this relic, held by Deacon Pedro Garza, as well as offer their respects to the saint’s episcopal ring, held by Archbishop Flores and protected in a special glass case. The archbishop plans to travel to Jalapa by the end of the year to donate the ring to a church museum there commemorating St. Rafael.