About Our Lady of Refuge · Barstow, Texas
Our Lady of Refuge is a Catholic mission church serving the small West Texas town of Barstow in Ward County. It is one of several missions operated in the West Texas region by the Diocese of El Paso and is administered as a mission of Santa Rosa de Lima Parish in nearby Pecos. The mission offers a bilingual Sunday Mass to the local Catholic community along the I-20 corridor east of Pecos.
- Patron
- Our Lady of Refuge (Nuestra Señora del Refugio)
- Rector
- Rev. Jose De la Cruz Longoria, MNM
- Diocese
- Diocese of El Paso
Why belong here
Our Lady of Refuge offers the only Catholic Sunday Mass in Barstow, celebrated bilingually so that English- and Spanish-speaking families can worship together. As a mission of Santa Rosa de Lima in Pecos, it is served by an experienced team of Mill Hill missionaries and two permanent deacons, giving the small rural community a stable, priestly presence in an otherwise sparsely populated stretch of West Texas.
Mass times at Our Lady of Refuge
Weekly Mass schedule
Overview
Our Lady of Refuge is the Catholic mission church for the small West Texas town of Barstow in Ward County. It belongs to the Diocese of El Paso and is administered as a mission of Santa Rosa de Lima Parish in Pecos. The mission provides a single bilingual Sunday Mass for English- and Spanish-speaking Catholics in this rural stretch of West Texas.
- Mission of: Santa Rosa de Lima Parish, Pecos
- Vicariate of St. Luke (West Texas)
- Diocese of El Paso
- Sunday Mass: 11:00 AM (Bilingual)
Diocese of El Paso
Our Lady of Refuge is part of the Catholic Diocese of El Paso, which covers parishes and missions across West Texas and the El Paso region. Within the diocese, the mission is grouped in the Vicariate of St. Luke (West Texas), together with Pecos-area parishes such as Santa Rosa de Lima and St. Catherine, and companion missions including Christ the King in Balmorhea and Our Lady of Guadalupe Shrine in Saragosa.
- Diocese: El Paso
- Vicariate: St. Luke (West Texas)
- Parent parish: Santa Rosa de Lima, Pecos
Clergy and Staff
The mission is served by the same pastoral team that ministers to Santa Rosa de Lima and St. Catherine in Pecos. The pastor and parochial vicar are Mill Hill Missionaries (MNM), an international missionary society, and they are assisted by two permanent deacons. Because the priests live in Pecos and travel to Barstow for Sunday Mass, parishioners are encouraged to call the Pecos parish office for any pastoral needs.
- Rev. Jose De la Cruz Longoria, MNM — Pastor
- Rev. Gabriel Terrones Marin, MNM — Parochial Vicar
- Deacon Oscar Machuca
- Deacon Rudy Villegas
The Town of Barstow
Barstow was organized in 1892 and named for its founder, Rhode Island-born irrigation expert George E. Barstow, who is buried in the local cemetery. The town served as the original Ward County seat, with a three-story red sandstone courthouse built in 1893 (since razed), and briefly prospered from irrigated agriculture, even winning a silver medal for grapes at the 1904 World's Fair. The 1904 break of the Pecos River dam and subsequent droughts ended the farming era, and the county seat moved to Monahans in 1938. Today Barstow is a quiet rural community where Our Lady of Refuge continues to serve the remaining Catholic faithful.
- Founded: 1892
- Founder: George E. Barstow
- Original Ward County seat (until 1938)
- 1904 World's Fair silver medal for grapes