PIPE CREEK, Texas (LifeSiteNews) – A priest both ordained and canceled by the Archbishop of San Antonio has come out in public support of a family-owned retreat center canceled in its turn.
Father David Wagner, a married priest with children, teaches English and History at Lumen Christi Academy, a private micro-school at Sanctus Ranch. The school was named in Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller’s January 30 “Prohibition” forbidding Catholics to participate in any of the activities at Sanctus Ranch. One of the archbishop’s allegations is that Lumen Christi Academy is misrepresented as a diocesan Catholic school, an accusation its founder Dan Sevigny vigorously rejects.
In an interview with LifeSiteNews about the “Prohibition,” Fr. Wagner said he could not understand “what the leadership of this archdiocese has in mind.”
“This is a holy place. Why you would want to restrict it, or curtail it, or shut it down, I can’t imagine,” he said.
Wagner believes he himself has experienced cancelation in the Archdiocese of San Antonio. A 2008 convert from the Episcopalian Church who was ordained for the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of Saint Peter in 2014 by Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller, Wagner accepted an invitation from the archdiocese to take a parish. He served as the pastor of Notre Dame Catholic Church in Kerrville for six years and then was “forcibly retired.”
“Others have told me it was political. It was because of my orthodox and conservative views, my being a traditionalist. It was for those reasons,” he told LifeSiteNews.
For a year after his “retirement,” Wagner worked as a supply priest, but he says this employment dried up.
When Dan Sevigny, the owner of Sanctus Ranch, asked him if he would be interesting in coming to the school he was starting, Wagner was keen.
Originally, the priest was asked to say Mass and hear confessions, but then he was asked to teach full-time. Before his ordination as a Catholic priest, Wagner had taught Philosophy, English, and Theology at Northwest Vista College, the Mexican American Catholic College, and St. Mary’s University, which are all in San Antonio. Wagner says that after he was “retired” as a priest, he received no salary or redundancy payment from the archdiocese.
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The school started last September with six students. There are 15 now, and Wagner believes there will be 40 this coming September. The school has a classical curriculum, and it is dedicated to “the Catholic formation of students.”
“They are learning the classics. They learn Latin. We teach history from the perspective of the Catholic Church,” he told LifeSiteNews.
“The Sevigny family, they are devoted,” he added. “From my perspective, they are responding to the call of the Lord to do all this. I think that they’re doing very well, and we’ve more than doubled since we’ve started.”
Unfortunately, the archbishop has told Wagner to resign from his post at Lumen Christi Academy, the priest says. Wagner told LifeSite that, when he indicated that he would leave eventually, García-Siller’s Vicar General told him to resign after his contract runs out this May. It was suggested that he contact the local superintendent of Catholic schools to discuss a job.
“I have no intention of doing that,” the priest said. “I have every intention of staying here.”
A spokesman for the archdiocese told LifeSiteNews via email that the “Archdiocese of San Antonio is unable to publicly elaborate on personnel matters regarding priests.”
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Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller was born in San Luis Potosi, Mexico in 1956. The oldest son of a large family, he joined the Missionaries of the Holy Spirit, an order founded in Mexico City in 1914, as a teenager. He was sent to the USA from Mexico in 1980 by his order to minister to migrants along the west coast. In 1984, he received priestly ordination in Guadalajara, and taught there from 1988 to 1990.
In 1990 García-Siller returned to the USA, this time as the Rector of the Missionaries of the Holy Spirit in Lynwood and Long Beach, California. In 1996, he was appointed Rector of the Missionaries of the Holy Spirit at Mount Angel, Oregon. He served in this capacity until 1999, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1998.
From 1999 until 2003 García-Siller was the Major Superior of his order for the USA and Canada. In 2003, he was named auxiliary bishop of Chicago by the ailing Pope John Paul II and served as Cardinal Francis George’s liaison to the Hispanic community. He was named Archbishop of San Antonio by Benedict XVI in 2010. In recent years, the archbishop has made headlines for his calls for immigration reform and gun control and for poorly spelled tweets criticizing Donald Trump of weakness, racism and hate. He has expressed contrition for the latter.
García-Siller has also caused consternation over his dealings with local Anglican Use parish, first attempting to banish its beloved founder Father Christopher Phillips in what parishioners suggested was a “land grab,” and then expelling three Poor Clares attached to the community before, finally, stripping Fr. Phillips of his priestly faculties in December 2019. This was ostensibly for not having reported to the archdiocese in 2016 a historic sexual abuse allegation about a deacon with whom he worked. The deacon, who was himself suspended, had died that January.
García-Siller has also canceled Father Clay Hunt, refused faculties to Father Donald Kloster, and been accused of canceling many other priests and deacons in his diocese for unjust reasons.
In 2016, it was revealed that García-Siller had welcomed into the Archdiocese of San Antonio a Chicago priest who had been dismissed from ministry because of an inappropriate relationship with another adult man.