A Biography of the Most Reverend Plácido Rodríguez, C.M.F.

By Deacon Leroy Behnke
Director of Communications
Diocese of Lubbock


The boy who would become the second Bishop of Lubbock spent his earliest years in Celaya, a city of some 130,000 (40,000 at that time) inhabitants located 125 miles northwest of Mexico City and surrounded by croplands on the high plains of Guanajuato.


A Faith-Filled Family

“My father was a cabinet-maker, a master craftsman” with his shop and showroom next to the family home in Celaya, said Bishop Plácido Rodríguez, CMF .”I learned a lot from (him). (He was) a quietly courageous man who was a brilliant strategist -- not only in business, but in ways he helped the church during the religious persecution in Mexico (1921-1940).”

Eutemio Rodriguez Cárdenas – who was acquainted with Blessed Miguel Pro, a priest martyred during the persecution and beatified by Pope John Paul II – was a leader in the Guanajuato underground rescue movement formed to same the lives of priests during the murderous anti-Catholic rampage.

“He used to hide the priests (and) he openly defended the church’s rights at a time when it was dangerous to be involved,” said Bishop Rodríguez. “There was even an order, allegedly issued by the President, to have my father assassinated.”

While the bishop’s father was highly political, an architect of movements that supported laborers’ rights as well as those advocating religious freedom, Maria Concepción Rosiles de Rodriguez lived out her vocation at home, as a homemaker, nurturing her family and serving as the unifying force for her household.

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Copyright ©2007 The Roman Catholic Diocese of Lubbock