Virgilio Elizondo

Elizondo was born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1935 to Mexican immigrants who ran a grocery store.[3] He grew up in a society where the Mexican-American community was barred from many segments of the city and speaking Spanish was not welcome. Never hearing English spoken, he himself was unable to speak it fluently until he had reached the sixth grade.[4]

After completing Peacock Military Academy, Elizondo enrolled at St. Mary's University in San Antonio, where he majored in chemistry, earning a Bachelor of Science degree. Though he had considered a career in medicine, he felt called to serve in the ministry and enrolled in Assumption Seminary in San Antonio, so that he could stay close to his home.[3]

Elizondo was ordained as a priest of the Archdiocese of San Antonio in 1963 by Robert E. Lucey, its archbishop. He spent the next two years serving in parishes of the archdiocese before he was appointed the Director of Religious Education for the archdiocese, which turned his career to a more academic focus. Lucey relied on him as a liaison to the Mexican-American population and brought Elizondo with him as a translator and advisor to the Conference of Latin American Bishops held in 1968 in Medellin, Colombia, which advanced a progressive agenda for the Catholic Church in the Americas.[3]

After this experience, Elizondo returned to San Antonio and soon began to organize the Hispanic population to work to protect its rights. He was the founder and first director of the Pastoral Institute at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio. In an effort to help the American Catholic clergy connect with the Hispanic population, he joined with Patrick Flores, an auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese, in founding the Mexican-American Cultural Center (now the Mexican American Catholic College) in 1972. It provided programs to teach religious leaders to think and serve from a Hispanic perspective, that they might better serve their growing congregations of Hispanic Catholics.

Elizondo moved to Paris, France, soon after this, where he enrolled at the Institut Catholique de Paris, a leading faculty in catechetical studies in 1978, earning there the degrees of both a Doctor of Philosophy and a Doctor of Sacred Theology.

In the late 1980s, Flores, by then the Archbishop of San Antonio, appointed Elizondo appointed as the pastor of the Cathedral of San Fernando. He introduced a Spanish-language Mass there which was broadcast to a million homes.

Elizondo's body was found at his home on March 14, 2016. He had died from gunshot wounds to the head. He was removed from public ministry by his local ordinary because of credible allegations of sexual abuse of a minor, allegedly committed in 1983, which he vigorously denied.[5] The criminal and civil cases dealing with these child abuse allegations were long delayed and the pending trial date was said to have made him despondent.[6] Elizando maintained his innocence and the full details of the allegations and any supporting evidence were never made public. Elizando was never convicted or found responsible. The Medical Examiner of Bexar County, Texas, soon ruled his death a suicide.[7] Elizando was given a full Catholic funeral rite and burial honoring his service to the Catholic Church and the world.