By SUSAN DE MATTEO

TYLER – As it enters into a year of preparation for its 25th anniversary, the Diocese of Tyler can look back on a history of growth.

Carved from portions of the Dallas, Beaumont and Galveston-Houston Dioceses on Dec. 12, 1986, the Diocese of Tyler was formally erected Feb. 24, 1987, establishing a local church in an area dominated by Protestant fundamentalism and where Catholics were, and remain, a distinct minority.

Msgr. Charles E. Herzig of San Antonio was named first bishop of Tyler by Pope John Paul II in December, 1986. He was ordained bishop and installed Feb. 24, 1987, in a Mass at the Oil Palace in Tyler.

A native of San Antonio, Bishop Herzig was born Aug. 14, 1929, and ordained to the priesthood on May 31, 1955. He served his entire priestly career in the Archdiocese of San Antonio until coming to East Texas.

His new see was comprised of 32 counties in Northeast Texas, with 41 parishes and missions and 39 priests serving some 30,000 Catholics. Only seven counties had more than one Catholic church, and two counties – Delta and Rains – had none at all.

Almost a quarter of a century later, the diocese is comprised of 33 counties, since Madison County, home of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church in Madisonville, was ceded to the Diocese of Tyler in 1999 by the Diocese of Galveston-Houston. The number of parishes within those counties has increased dramatically to 70, with three added since 2000.

And on February 27, St. Ann Church in Winnsboro, formerly a mission of St. James Church in Sulphur Springs, was elevated to a parish.

A number of men and women religious serve in a variety of ministries in East Texas, working in areas of education, health care and social services. Of the 84 priests working here, 11 are religious order priests, including Bishop Álvaro Corrada, SJ. In addition, there are 46 women religious in the diocese representing 12 religious communities. Among the women religious are the cloistered Dominican nuns in the Monastery of the Infant Jesus in Lufkin, a contemplative order whose members devote themselves to perpetual prayer for the needs of God’s people.

The diocese also is home to a hermitess, Sister Mary Vogel, HSSR, who spends her days in prayerful solitude.

Two communities have been founded  in the diocese, the Missioneras Guadalupanas de Santa Anna in Mount Pleasant, and the Daughters of Divine Hope. Another fledgling community, the Servitores Reginae Apostolorum, has found a home in the diocese as its foundress, Sister Margarita Igriczi-Nagy serves the Latin Mass community of St. Joseph the Worker in Tyler.

The diocese also has given several young women to religious life through a discernment program organized by Sister Angelica Orozco, EFMS, and conducted by women in the various religious communities in East Texas. Each year the program invites young women to reflect on a possible vocation through courses in spiritual enrichment and direction, with informational talks by sisters and visits to different religious houses.

In addition, 89 permanent deacons serve Catholic communities throughout the diocese. The diocese also has six transitional deacons who will be ordained to the priesthood this year, and two seminarians, Justin Braun and Sayf Bowlin, who will be ordained to the transitional diaconate in May.

Education has long been a vital part of the Catholic Church’s mission in East Texas. In the Tyler Diocese, six Catholic schools are supported by three parishes, with roughly 1,100 students enrolled in St. Gregory Elementary in Tyler, St. Joseph Elementary School and Early Childhood Learning Center in Marshall, St. Mary (pre-K-8) in Longview, St. Patrick Elementary in Lufkin and the Bishop T.K. Gorman Middle and High Schools in Tyler.

In 2010, St. Gregory Catholic Elementary and the Bishop Gorman middle and high schools, which comprised the Tyler Catholic school system, were separated. St. Gregory formally became St. Gregory Cathedral School, a ministry of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, and Bishop Gorman was named a regional school, part of Bishop Corrada’s cluster school model. As a regional school, Bishop Gorman “belongs” to all parishes in the West Central deanery, rather than the cathedral alone. In keeping with this model, beginning this July, all parishes in the West Central deanery will be assessed a tax to help support the school.

And in a concrete testament to the commitment of local Catholics to education, St. Mary will be expanding its program to the ninth grade in the fall, launching a Catholic high school in Longview. The program will add one grade a year, and will graduate its first class in the spring of 2015. In a ceremony in December, 11 families signed a commitment to the school.

College campus ministry also is gaining focus in the diocese. St. Mary Chapel and Catholic student center at Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches has long been a thriving presence, but in the past year Deacon Shaun Black of the cathedral parish in Tyler has been organizing a ministry to students at the University of Texas in Tyler.

Another historically important component of the church’s mission is health care, a tradition that extends to East Texas. The Diocese of Tyler is home to five health care facilities: Trinity Mother Frances Health System in Tyler, sponsored by the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth; Christus St. Michael Health Care Center and Christus St. Michael Rehabilitation Hospital in Texarkana, operated by the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word of Houston.

Bishop Herzig shepherded East Texas Catholics for nearly five years, until his death from cancer on Sept. 7, 1991.

Bishop Edmond Carmody, a native of Ahalana, County Kerry, Ireland, was installed as second bishop of Tyler May 25, 1992. Like his predecessor, Bishop Carmody worked in the San Antonio Archdiocese in a variety of capacities. He resigned his positions to serve with the St. James Missionary Society in Ecuador and Peru, returning to Texas in 1988 when he was named auxiliary bishop of San Antonio.

Bishop Carmody served the church in East Texas until Feb. 3, 2000, when he was named bishop of the Diocese of Corpus Christi. He was installed March 17 as head of the South Texas diocese.

He was succeeded by Bishop Álvaro Corrada del Rio, SJ, who was named third bishop of the diocese on Dec. 5, 2000, and installed Jan. 31, 2001.

Bishop Corrada was born May 13, 1942, in Santurce, Puerto Rico. He studied at Jesuit seminaries and was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1974. He served in Puerto Rico the first five years of his priesthood, followed by six years in the New York Archdiocese. He has taught high school, counseled Hispanic inmates, been a retreat master, and once served as pastoral coordinator of the New York-based Northeast Catholic Pastoral Center for Hispanics.

He was appointed an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Washington in 1985, the first Puerto Rican bishop appointed to a mainland U.S. diocese. In 1997, while still an auxiliary in Washington, he was named apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Caguas in his native Puerto Rico.

In Puerto Rico, Bishop Corrada dealt with the issues of Puerto Rico's relationship to the United States and with the Navy practice bombings on the island of Vieques, which is in the Caguas Diocese.

Soon after stepping into his role as head of the church in East Texas, Bishop Corrada identified several objectives for the Tyler Diocese.

First and foremost, he said, was to continue to establish the diocese’s identity as the church of East Texas, fulfilling a vital role in the lives of the faithful. In order to do that, the clergy must find and establish an identity of their own, native vocations must be fostered and active lay leaders educated and formed, he said.

Bishop Corrada also has spent his 10 years as bishop of Tyler encouraging a spiritual and liturgical renewal in the diocese, implementing the processes of Christian Initiation, liturgical renewal and the Call to Holiness and Discipleship.

In talks and homilies throughout the diocese, Bishop Corrada has urged Catholics to “fall in love with the liturgy” and to “encounter the person of Jesus Christ” who is at the heart of the faith so that all may answer the call to “be holy as your father is holy.”

As part of his emphasis, he has transformed the Bishop’s Appeal, which funds the offices and programs of the diocese, from a strictly financial campaign into a process of spiritual renewal, focusing as much on prayer, penance and fasting as almsgiving.

Yet even in its new guise, the appeal remains the principal way of funding diocesan endeavors, such as religious education, vocations, and Catholic East Texas.