Virgilio Elizondo

Virgilio P. Elizondo (August 28, 1935 – March 14, 2016) was a Mexican-American Roman Catholic priest and community activist, who was also a leading scholar of Liberation and Hispanic theology. He was widely regarded as "the father of U.S. Latino religious thought." Elizondo was the founder of the Pastoral Institute at the University of the Incarnate Word. He was also a co-founder of the Mexican-American Cultural Center, a think tank for scholars and religious leaders to develop pastoral ministry and theology from a Hispanic perspective. He was well known for his book, Galilean Journey: The Mexican-American Promise, which examined the similarities between Jesus' Galilean background and the mestizo experience.

Elizondo was born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1935 to Mexican immigrants who ran a grocery store. He grew up in a society where the Mexican-American community was barred from many segments of the city and speaking Spanish was not welcome. Never hearing English spoken, he himself was unable to speak it fluently until he had reached the sixth grade.

After completing high school, Elizondo enrolled at St. Mary's University in San Antonio, where he majored in chemistry, earning a Bachelor of Science degree. Though he had considered a career in medicine, he felt called to serve in the ministry and enrolled in Assumption Seminary in San Antonio, so that he could stay close to his home.

Elizondo was ordained as a priest of the Archdiocese of San Antonio in 1963 by Robert E. Lucey, its archbishop. He spent the next two years serving in parishes of the archdiocese before he was appointed the Director of Religious Education for the archdiocese, which turned his career to a more academic focus. Lucey relied on him as a liaison to the Mexican-American population and brought Elizondo with him as a translator and advisor to the Conference of Latin American Bishops held in 1968 in Medellin, Colombia, which advanced a progressive agenda for the Catholic Church in the Americas.

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