	FEATURE STORY
	A Different Kind of ‘PADRE’ Now 80, Fr. Roberto Peña, OMI, reflects on his years as a self-described Chicano priest. En Español
Photos By Courtesy By Goyo López “Yo se lo que es tener hambre como sacerdote.”—Fr. Roberto Peña
He calls himself an unabashed Chicano priest. Although the charged ethnic identification sends shivers throughout the largely Mexican American population comprising the Diocese of Laredo, especially those among the middle and upper economic classes, Father Roberto Peña, OMI, uses the title as a badge of honor. “All political activist priests at that time who were Mexican American called themselves Chicano,” recalls Fr. Peña. “The more affluent Mexican Americans in our communities didn’t like the word or term. It was demeaning for them. They believed that it was a derogatory term. But they didn’t realize that it came from the Mexica (pronounced meh-SHEE-cah) indian tribe in Mexico.” Fr. Peña, now 80-years-old, hails from what historians call the greatest generation of Americans-those from the World War II era. The majority of academics agree that this generation of Americans led the charge in forming the modern face of our country. Fr. Peña, who served in the US Army during WWII, and was honorably discharged in 1946, possesses many of the values common to patriots of that era—duty, honor and country. In the Harlingen, Texas native’s case, God also came into play. The soft-spoken, yet extremely candid priest, remember utilizing the GI Bill to fund his war interrupted collegiate education like many soon to be prominent Mexican Americans of his time. As a result, Fr. Peña’s calling did not come until later in life. He enrolled at the Oblate Seminary in San Antonio at the age of 23 and was ordained in 1955, about nine-years after being discharged from the military. However, his story as an activist priest does not begin here.

The many faces of Fr. Roberto Peña as a Harlingen Cardinal High School graduate, as a recently ordained Oblate priest and as a priest celebrating his Silver Jubilee.
Instead, one must travel back to his childhood to fully understand the pain and humiliation he had experienced and that compelled him as an adult to seek social justice in his community. In the May 13, 1977 edition of the National Catholic Reporter, special correspondent Rick Casey discovered the origin to Fr. Peña’s quest for equality for Mexican Americans in the Catholic Church as well as society at large. “When I lived two-and-a-half blocks away from an Anglo church which was Catholic — they called it ‘American’ – they told us we belonged about two-and-a-half miles away at the ‘Mexican’ church,” Casey quoted Fr. Peña in his story. Later as a veteran of WWII, he too like many other Mexican Americans, African Americans and Native Americans, felt the sting of racism and prejudice upon returning to their homes and in this case, south Texas. All these instances and many more, along with his personal witness to the injustices of his fellow brothers and sisters, called him to higher a honor, duty and mission. “After 100-years of the Oblates being here [in south Texas], I was the first Mexican American in the United States,” exclaims Fr. Peña. “I was ordained on May 31, 1955 at the San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio by Archbishop Robert Lucey. I was 32-years old.” Fr. Peña didn’t have to go far to began his first of many fights for civil rights. “En el West Side [de San Antonio] todavia esta muy triste la cosa,” he laments. “La colecta en St. Alphonsus era $1,000 por mes. Te puedes imaginar como puedes correr una parroquia por $1,000 por mes. Es muy difícil.” The poverty plaguing his parish did not prevent Fr. Peña from forging ahead with his work. He eventually organized, educated, and by that virtue, empowered young parishioners to petition city governement for adequate parkland and a swimming pool on the West Side of San Antonio over by Zarzamora Street. The city leaders listened and the demands were met. The Oblate left San Antonio in 1959 for Houston and the National Parish of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. It was the “Mexican” church for Houston, Fr. Peña explains much like the own he attended as a boy in Harlingen. “Remember that at that time there was still discrimination within the Church,” Fr. Peña says. “I say discrimination because the mexicanos were told at their parishes that they had to go to Our Lady of Guadalupe. Y habian muchos mexicanos. Casi puro mejicanos. We spoke Spanish there. In fact, all our sacraments were in Spanish. We had a school, though, y logramos tener misa en ingles el domingo por los niños de la escuela.” San Antonio and Houston served as a training ground for the increasingly politically active Fr. Peña and his biggest mission yet. In 1962 he moved to the Valley and remained there until 1968 – it was the height of the Civil Rights Movement in America. Catholics believe that the Lord works in mysterious ways and Fr. Peña is no different. He embarked to the ranchlands in the Valley between the cities of Mission to the south and Rio Grande City to the north. The area included Poso de Agua, Peñitas, Tierra Blanca, La Joya, Havana, Los Ebanos, Cuevitas, Sullivan City, Los Pompas y Los Garzas. And they were dirt poor. They used untreated water from the Rio Grande purchased for 25-cents per barrel. “We would have to boil the water to clean it, but even then we still got sick,” he remembers. “Yo se lo que es tener hambre como sacerdote. Yo veia a mi gente pobre. La colecta cuando yo entre a los ranchos eran $63.50. La gente me mantenia a mi porque me iba a los ranchos todo el dia. Te salias a las cinco o a las cinco y media de la mañana, dependia que rancho ibas, y allí te quedabas todo el dia. “Y te daban lo que ellos tenian. Me mantenia con eso todo el dia y llegaba a la casa como a las diez de la noche y me comia un sandwich de bologna.” Fr. Peña’s first of many accomplishments were now taking shape. The man with the courage of his conviction, an unyielding faith in our Lord and the support of his bishop, Most Reverend Humberto Medeiros, strove harder to fill his hunger for righteousness and justice. In late 1966, Fr. Peña was named pastor of the newest parish in the Diocese of Brownsville. Our Lady Queen of Angels unified the six missions that had served the many parishioners of the ranchlands. Then in June 1967, Fr. Peña led the charge to develop a non-profit group to own and operate a water/wastewater treament center headquartered in Los Ebanos in order to accomplish what the politicians could, or would, not – deliver clean water to the poor people of the ranchlands. Simulataneously, a much larger campaign was being waged on many fronts but all with a similar theme. They championed for an end to second-class citizenship of Mexican Americans in Texas at all levels from farmworkers to students. “En aquel tiempo estava muy fuerte el movimiento del campesino. Y estava fuerte la causa de Cesar Chavez para los campesinos,” explains Fr. Peña. Mi gente era campesina y mi gente era pobre. Habia pedio yo que se le pagara a nuestra gente a lo menos cincuenta centavos o un dolar la hora. Me meti fuerte en eso. Pero solo. No me dijo nadie que metiera en esto.” With the founder of the United Farmworker’s Union, Cesar Chavez now joining the fray in south Texas, the ante had been upped as well as the tension. The wealthy landowners, according to Peña, countered with the Texas Rangers – a group notorious among the poorer Mexican Americans throughout the state. “Empezo una marcha en Rio Grande City for farmworker rights,” Fr. Peña says in his native bilingual delivery. “We were trying to get a minimum wage of $1.25 an hour now. The farmworkers were making about $1,500 a year. Bishop Medeiros asked me to go to Rio Grande City to give the invocation and follow the march to make sure that nothing happend to the participants. The farmworkers marched to el santuario de San Juan de los Lagos. It was not a basilica then. And then we met a lot of people from all over the United States. This was a peaceful march but there was a lot of tension.” So much tension that three priests from San Antonio were arrested for supposed trespassing onto private property as they protested on behalf of farmworker rights. “They were taken to jail by the Texas Rangers right there in Starr County,” Fr. Peña says. “Bishop Medeiros asked me to go bail them out, but they refused. The priests said they wanted to stay in jail. They stuck to their convictions to bring out what was happening in the Valley and for the right to organize.” Then came ‘the’ march. They came from everywhere and were headed one place, to the state capitol. This time Fr. Peña was involved as a marcher fighting for the basic dignity and human rights of his fellow brothers and sisters. “I didn’t wear a collar this time or my blacks,” he says referring to the priestly vestments. “I wanted to see firsthand what it was like to be treated like a farmworker. It wasn’t very nice. Before we got to San Antonio, Governor Dolph Briscoe and Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes appealed to us to stop the march. That this was not the way to go about change.” As only the Mexican American history books will tell you, the march went on. However, his political activism had consequences. “Were there repercussions? Yes, most definitely,” Fr. Peña says sadly. “It was hard for me. I’m a friendly guy and people who had been my friends would now ignore me. But it wasn’t only the lay people but my brother priests as well. Even some priests in the Valley told me that I should go back to Mexico. Priests told me this and I wasn’t even from Mexico. I felt the pressure there in the Valley by my own people. “You talk about repercussions,” he countinues “even members of my own family were pressuring me asking what a priest was doing involved in marches, strikes and the overall struggle. They couldn’t understand a priest doing this.” As radical as Fr. Peña, and other Chicano priests like him, were perceived to be, their intentions were still very noble. While their struggles for social justice had been aimed primarily at the secular community, their focus was now rapidly changing. “The Chicano priests did not want to leave the Church. We wanted to change the Church from within. That was very important because we can’t blame the Church for everything,” Fr. Peña emphasizes. By the end of the 60’s a new group was rising within the Catholic Church. Just as many Mexican Americans had felt shunned by society and Church, so too, were the clergy of similar ethnicity realizing the lack of representation among the clergy. In 1970, with Fr. Peña as a founding board member, Padres Associados para Derechos Religiosos Educativos y Sociales (PADRES) is founded with the sole purpose of promoting the vocation of priesthood among Mexican Americans and to promote Mexican Americans who were already in the priesthood. “We did not have a voice in the Catholic Church in the United States of America,” says Fr. Peña. Fr. Ralph Ruiz served as the first president and current Archbishop Patricio Flores of the Diocese of San Antonio, who as a regular priest back then became the second president of the group. Archbishop Flores became the first Mexican American priest in the United States to be ordained an Auxiliary Bishop on May 5, 1970 in San Antonio. “That was a direct result of PADRES,” says Fr. Peña. “The idea for the Mexican American Cultural Center in San Antonio arose directly from PADRES efforts to increase religious vocations among Mexican Americans. The people who developed it were then Bishop Flores, the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops and the seminary in San Antonio. But it was a direct reflection of PADRES and HERMANAS.” Soon thereafter, Fr. Peña departed to Mexico City for three-years of study. Upon his return, he took the helm as president of PADRES in 1974 succeeding Archbishop Flores. And the advocacy continued. With PADRES headquartered in San Antonio, he earned the respect of critical San Antonio Express columnist Roddy Stinson, who in his August 11, 1975 article, described Fr. Peña as an “eagle…the feathered symbol of American power and courage.” There were many more accollades, honors and appointments for Fr. Peña – far too many to mention here. In the years following his presidency of PADRES, he served briefly in Eagle Pass and Del Rio. He was originally assigned to Eagle Pass but did not remain there because the priest he was supposed to replace was in the midst of building a new church. “It wasn’t right for me to stay,” he says humbly. “That priest went on to build Our Lady of Refuge in Eagle Pass.” After six-months in Del Rio, Fr. Peña moved to Laredo where he served as pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church for 17-months. Although the time period was short, his impact was lasting. “The love and respect with which parishioners of Our Lady of Guadalupe Church had accepted Rev. Fr. Roberto Peña was strongly manifested Sunday as more than 1,200 persons jammed the church to hear the popular clergyman deliver his final sermon,” the lead paragraph read in the February 12, 1981 edition of the Laredo Citizen. It is a love and respect that is still manifested today by countless Catholics throughout the United States and Mexico. But it came with a price of persecution more often than not by those closest to him. Despite the sacrifice and pain, he still calls himself a Chicano priest.