Bishop Patrick Flores - 1978

Archbishop Patrick Fernández Flores in 1978 - Bishop Patrick Flores became the third bishop of El Paso, Texas. On 5 May 1970 he was consecrated a bishop by Archbishop Luigi Raimondi. He was appointed auxiliary to the archbishop of San Antonio. Also in May 1970, Flores was appointed chairman of the Texas State Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and that July he became national chaplain for the League of United Latin American Citizens. In 1972, he was co-founder and honorary chairman of the Mexican-American Cultural Center in San Antonio. In 1978 he was appointed bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of El Paso and then in 1979 the Archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Antonio, which was, at the time, the largest ecclesiastical province in the United States. In 1980, Flores became a member of the Hispanic Caucus Committee, and in 1981, he founded Catholic Television of San Antonio, the first diocesan television station in the United States. In 1997, when Billy Graham headlined a religious crusade at the Alamodome, Flores taped radio spots in English and Spanish to promote the event. Graham later credited Flores for the large response from the area's largely Catholic Hispanic community. Flores' suit against the city of Boerne, Texas in his bid to expand St. Peter's Church there led to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision City of Boerne v. Flores (1997), which struck down certain provisions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 as unconstitutionally exceeding the powers granted to the Congress under Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment. His motto is Laborabo non mihi sed omnibus, "I will work not for myself but for others". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Flores

Area: Central / El Paso High