Bishop Peter Verdaguer

Verdaguer ran the vicariate on almost nothing. He warned every priest he asked to join him that the pay would be ten dollars a month or less, yet the clergy grew from ten to thirty-two in his years. In 1894 he invited the Sisters of Mercy to open a hospital in Laredo, and in 1901 the Claretians he had asked for from Mexico City sent priests for his Spanish-speaking Catholics. He died on October 26, 1911, on the road from Corpus Christi to Mercedes for confirmations, and was buried at Laredo after a requiem Mass in Corpus Christi.

What the plaque says

Bishop Peter Verdaguer Born in the Cataluna region of Spain, the most Rev. Peter Verdaguer de Prat studied in the United States. He was ordained (1862) in San Francisco and ministered at Catholic Indian missions in California. While serving at Our Lady of the Angels Church in Los Angeles, he was nominated for the Vicariate of Brownsville. Consecrated a Bishop in Barcelona in 1890, he sailed to Corpus Christi and in 1891 took up residence in Laredo. Entrusted with the care of 42,500 Catholics, Bishop Verdaguer faced two severe problems: the extreme poverty of the Vicariate and the mobility of the many Mexican-Americans among his flock. The great drought of the early 1890s aggravated the situation. Bishop Verdaguer spent much of his time traveling on horseback from Laredo to Victoria and Brownsville, baptizing, marrying and confirming the faithful on South Texas ranches. Despite hardship, three new churches were built in Laredo from 1896 to 1909. During the tenure of the most Rev. Verdaguer, the number of Catholics in the Vicariate rose to 82,000, and the number of churches, schools and clergy increased significantly. After his death, the Vicariate continued to exist until 1913, when the Diocese of Corpus Christi was established. (1978)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lake Casa Blanca International State Park — 2.0 mi
  A 1,680-acre reservoir on Chacón Creek at Laredo's eastern edge, a city lake run as a state park since 1991, with bass fishing, camping and a long human history.
• San Agustín Cathedral — 2.4 mi
  Laredo's Gothic Revival parish church, finished in 1872 on a parish older than Texas statehood, and the mother church of the Diocese of Laredo since 2000.
• San Agustín Plaza — 2.4 mi
  The shaded square at the center of Laredo's 1755 town, where Carrizo families, Spanish ranchers and a century of border politics shared the same ground.
• Republic of the Rio Grande Museum — 2.4 mi
  A stone-and-adobe Laredo house, by tradition the capitol of a federalist republic that lasted ten months in 1840, now a museum of life in a mid-nineteenth-century home.

More markers nearby

• Refugio Benavides — steps away
• Santos Benavides — steps away
• City Cemetery — steps away
• Raymond and Tirza Martin High School — 1.7 mi