3.3 Racial attitudes and religious social work: the texas-mexican  (Page 5/14)

Endearingly called La madre Benita by parishioners, Sister Benitia believed that people would be more receptive to the Church’s message if first their hunger and physical misery were relieved. Tirelessly she trekked Houston’s streets making contacts all over the city among its merchants, the well-to-do, and anyone else she could enlist in her struggle to meet some of the basic material needs of her students and their families. As relentless as she was resourceful, Sister Benitia salvaged discarded rugs for parishioners who often slept on cotton-picking sacks; solicited food from grocers and packing houses, clothing and other provisions from affluent homes; and useful gifts from local charities. Valdez, Missionary Catechists , 5-12; 19-20. A wise and experienced teacher, Sister Benitia understood the role of proper nutrition in learning:

There’s a vast difference between a full stomach and an empty stomach as an influence in shaping the attitudes of children. Hunger affects their school work, lessens their chances to resist the inroads of even ordinary diseases of children and has a great bearing in shaping their destiny. “Starving Kids Get Lift,” Houston Chronicle , 11 September 1932, p. 14.

Naturally, providing hot meals for her students and sending food to their homes was a high priority. With seemingly boundless energy she even made time to supervise the cultivation of small vegetable plots on the parish grounds for use by neighborhood families, and part of her arsenal of food included a poultry and cow yard on the church property. Sister Benitia also tried to bring badly needed medical services into Guadalupe parish. During the influenza epidemic of 1918-1919 she persuaded some doctors to donate services to the hard-hit Mexican community. Family Circular , January 1916, 73, November 1916, 37; “Notes from Houston,” Mary Immaculate , May 1931, 147; Valdez, Missionary Catechists , 8. The founding in 1924 of what was originally called the “Mexican Clinic,” an important health resource for Mexican Houstonians, likely benefited from Sister Benitia’s previous groundwork and her advocacy for better health care for Mexicans in Houston. The founding of the clinic is attributed to Monsignor George T. Walsh. See “San José Clinic,” typewritten manuscript, Mexican American Small Collections, Box 2, Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston, Texas.

Houston’s Mexican population grew significantly during the 1920s and, as the Great Depression worsened in the 1930s, Sister Benitia redoubled her efforts to meet the challenges these developments posed to her social ministry. In 1930, she organized a group of young Mexican-American women from Guadalupe parish into the Missionary Catechists of Divine Providence. These volunteer catechists showed “all the zeal and consecration to their work, of a nun,” their bishop remarked. Sister Benitia initially trained these lay women, ranging in age from 16 to 22, to provide religious instruction to children who attended public schools. Houston’s Mexican-origin population increased from about 6,000 in 1920 to roughly 15,000 in 1930; De León, Ethnicity in the Sunbelt , 23; “The Catechists in Houston,” Mary Immaculate , May 1933, 151-52; “Modern Lay Apostles,” Mary Immaculate , September 1935, 233-34. Quoted material in American Board of Catholic Missions Report , 1932-1933, pp. 69-71, Archives of Loyola University of Chicago. The Catechists received papal approval and became a semi-autonomous affiliate of the Congregation of the Sisters of Divine Providence in 1946. See Valdez, Missionary Catechists . But their role soon expanded. As barrio residents, the Catechists were perfectly suited to be Sister Benitia’s eyes and ears and, as they canvassed Houston’s Mexican neighborhoods, they reported to Sister Benitia their people’s needs and dire conditions--something they knew only too well from their own experience. The Catechists fueled Sister Benitia’s dream of extending her social ministry to Mexicans throughout Houston; they were a central part of her plan to provide not only religious instruction but also a modicum of sorely needed social services for they city’s Mexican residents. “These young women . . . may be used for personal investigation work in all parts of the city,” a newspaper reported, “and for directing future welfare activities in centers planned for various [Mexican] settlements.” In the early 1930s, plans were underway for one such center in Houston’s North Side and by the latter 1930s another, called the Mexican Catholic Community Center, operated in the city’s West End. “Starving Kids Get a Lift,” Houston Chronicle ; Houston Chronicle , 20 April 1940, p. 6A; and 26 April 1940, p. 1D. These young Mexican-American women, several of whom entered convent life permanently, had a crucial role in Sister Benitia’s war on Mexican poverty in the Bayou City. Valdez, Missionary Catechists , follows the careers of the Catechists beginning in Houston; for names of Guadalupe parishioners who took vows, see Reverend de Anta Jubilee Souvenir, 1935, Our Lady of Guadalupe Parish (Houston) File, Archives of the Congregation of Divine Providence, San Antonio, Texas (hereafter ACDP).