Who we are
St. James the Greater was built by German farmers and Mexican ranch hands out of the white stone under their own fields. The walls are two feet thick, the bell came from Bremen, and the Sunday Masses have been in two languages for longer than anyone can remember.
We take our patron at his word. Once a year we walk eleven miles to the hilltop cross on his feast, every few years a group of us walks the last hundred kilometres to his tomb in Compostela, and every Sunday we set out again from the same altar. Whoever you are, wherever you are on the road, there is room to walk with us.
Through the years
The first Mass in Piedra Blanca was said in 1849 under a live oak that still stands behind the rectory. Seven years later the settlers quarried the church from the hill across the creek and dedicated it to Santiago, the patron of travellers — most of them had walked here from the Gulf coast. The bell tower followed in 1872 and the stained glass in 1908, paid for by a cotton harvest. In 1985 a parishioner walked the Camino de Santiago and came home with a scallop shell for the font; the July walk to the hilltop cross began the following summer and has not missed a year since.
Fellow pilgrims
Rev. Tomás Villarreal
Pastor
Fr. Tomás grew up on a goat ranch outside Junction and walked the Camino Francés the summer before ordination. He leads the July walk and does not slow down for anybody.
Deacon Karl Hoffmann
Permanent Deacon
Fourth-generation parishioner, retired large-animal vet. Deacon Karl baptizes most of our babies and rings the Bremen bell by hand at Easter.
Ana Lucía Garza
Director of Faith Formation
Ana runs catechesis in both languages from kindergarten through Confirmation, and plans the youth pilgrimage to San Juan del Valle.
Gretchen Weber
Pilgrimage Coordinator
Gretchen has walked to Compostela four times. She books the Spain trips, trains first-timers on Saturday mornings, and keeps a spare pair of blister socks in her car.
Serve & belong
Los Peregrinos Trail Ministry
A Saturday walk once a month on the ranch roads and state parks, with a Gospel reading at the halfway point. Every pace welcome; the sweep walker waits for the last.
walk@stjamespiedrablanca-demo.org
Camino Pilgrimage Office
Every other spring a parish group walks the last 100 km of the Camino Francés to Santiago. Training, fundraising and a blessing before you go.
Gretchen Weber
Guadalupanas
The Society of Our Lady of Guadalupe: the Mañanitas at dawn on December 12, the rosary on Sundays, and the tamales that pay for both.
Men's Club Sausage Supper
The first Sunday of November since 1921. Four thousand pounds of sausage, made in the parish hall by hand, and every cent to the school fund.
Coro Santiago
The bilingual choir for the 10:30 and the 12:30 — guitars, an accordion and whoever can hold a tune. Rehearsal Wednesdays after the evening Mass.
St. Vincent de Paul
Rent, groceries and rides to the clinic in San Antonio for anyone in the county who asks, parishioner or not.
In pictures
