Sacred Heart Catholic Church

This parish took shape inside a missionary territory rather than a diocese. In 1874 Pope Pius IX created the Vicariate Apostolic of Brownsville, a field that by 1908 covered 22,391 square miles from the Rio Grande to Aransas County. Its first vicar, Dominic Manucy, made Corpus Christi his base and built nine churches before Mobile claimed him in 1883. Claude Jaillet then held it together as vicar general with a dozen priests. Peter Verdaguer, a Catalan from Los Angeles, came in 1890 and gave towns like Rockport resident pastors. The vicariate became the Diocese of Corpus Christi in 1912.

What the plaque says

Sacred Heart Catholic Church Roman Catholic priests visited the Rockport area as early as 1838. The first Mass in the town of Rockport was celebrated in the home of County Judge John Hynes in 1860, and services continued there for a number of years. Although property was deeded to the church in 1871, the first church building was not erected until 1889. It was destroyed in a storm that same year and was replaced by another structure which served the congregation until 1954. In addition to its parochial school, Sacred Heart Church has served the community with many outreach programs. (1991)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fulton Mansion State Historic Site — 2.5 mi
  A French Second Empire house of 1874-77 on Aransas Bay, paid for with hides and tallow, with gas lights, central heat and hot running water no other house nearby had.
• Goose Island State Park — 8.6 mi
  A bayside park between St. Charles and Aransas bays, home of the Big Tree, the state champion coastal live oak, thought to be more than a thousand years old.
• Port Aransas — 13 mi
  The fishing town at the north end of Mustang Island, reached by a free state ferry that crosses the ship channel day and night, with a university marine lab begun in a one-room shack.
• USS Lexington Museum on the Bay — 25 mi
  An Essex-class carrier of 1943 moored off North Beach, the Blue Ghost that Tokyo Rose kept reporting sunk, and the Navy's training carrier for nearly three decades after.

More markers nearby

• Aransas County — steps away
• San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad in Rockport, The — steps away
• St. Peter's Episcopal Church — steps away
• Rockport Volunteer Fire Department — steps away