"Just before a mission trip of five days, that smile usually turns into a lovely headache from the jolts of the springless cart." Fr. Alonso M. Escalante in Tunghua, Manchuria. -- Maryknoll, The Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, was founded in 1911 by Revs. James Anthony Walsh and Thomas Frederick Price to be the main mission outreach of the Roman Catholic Church of the United States. The first group of missioners departed in 1918 for China. Today Maryknoll Priests, Brothers and Sisters are missioned in over 30 countries around the world. Fr. Alonso M. Escalante was born in Merida, Mexico, educated in Catholic Schools in Mexico and the United States. He entered Maryknoll Preparatory Seminary in 1920 and was ordained a Priest on February 1, 1931. His missionary labors took him to Fushun, Manchuria, China and later to the Pando, Bolivia. In 1943 he was named by the Holy See as Vicar Apostolic of the Pando and Titular Bishop of Sora. He was consecrated a Bishop in Mexico City on May 9, 1943. In 1948, at the request of the Mexican Hierarchy, he was assigned to assist in the organizing of a Foreign Mission Seminary and Society for Mexico. He was the Mexican National Director of the Pontifical Mission Aid Societies, a member of the Commission and Post-Conciliar Commission on the Missions, and President of the Mexican Episcopal Commission on the Missions. He was in Hong Kong in 1967 to secure mission territory for his Mexican Priests, when he caught typhoid fever and died on June 21, 1967.
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