Villaseca, Giuseppe Maria

VILLASECA, GIUSEPPE MARIA. - Priest, founder of the Missionaries of St. Joseph of Mexico, b. at Igualada (diocese of Barcelona) on 19 Jan. 1831, d. at Tacubaya (Mexico) on 4 Apr. 1910.

Having entered the seminary at Barcelona, he there heard Fr. Armengol, a Pauline missionary passing through, plead the cause of the Mexican missions, and at once offered himself for them. Having left Spain on 19 March 1853, he reached Vera Cruz on 2 Apr., and immediately entered the Congregation of St. Vincent de Paul, where, after completing his studies, he was ordained a priest in 1856. After various activities (among them the creation of a printing house that in a short time distributed more than 800,000 copies of apologetic pamphlets), he founded in 1860 at Monterrey a seminary, in 1872 at Mexico City the clerical College of St. Joseph, in which he was a distinguished rector and educator, and in the same year he carried out the idea of a double Congregation, male and female, which would concern itself, besides providing priests for vacant parishes, also with the unconverted indigenous peoples in particular. The two works, sustained by his enthusiasm and his virtues, were not long in flourishing and spreading; from 1884 his missionaries were able to work among the pagans in the states of Tarahumara,

Sonora, Chiapas, Tabasco, Nayarit. In 1903 he obtained the definitive approval of the two Institutions, of which he was the soul and the driving force until his death.