[8] While at Woodstock, Schuler was ordained a priest on June 27, 1901, by Cardinal Sebastiano Martinelli, the Apostolic Delegate to the United States.
[7] Following his ordination, he was allowed to skip the traditional tertianship period of Jesuit formation and was named president of Sacred Heart College in Denver.
[7] That same year, he was transferred from Sacred Heart College and sent to El Paso, Texas, where he served as assistant pastor at Immaculate Conception Church and chaplain to both Hotel Dieu Hospital and Holy Family Chapel.
Schuler received his episcopal consecration on October 28, 1915, from Archbishop John Baptist Pitaval, with Bishops Patrick A. McGovern and Henry Regis Granjon serving as co-consecrators at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Denver.
[7] The ceremony was attended by his mentor Nicholas Chrysostom Matz, who had become Bishop of Denver in 1889, and his mother Albertina, who received her son's first episcopal blessing.
[13] At the beginning of Schuler's tenure in 1915, the diocese contained 31 priests, 22 parishes, 58 missions, nine parochial schools, and three academies to serve 64,440 Catholics.
[14] By the end of Schuler's tenure 27 years later in 1942, there was a Catholic population of 121,854, as well as 118 priests, 49 parishes, 97 missions, 12 parochial schools, and five academies.
[1] One such seminarian was Peter of Jesus Maldonado, who was ordained a priest by Schuler in 1918, murdered in 1937, and canonized a saint by Pope John Paul II in 2000.
[17] Described as a "liberal" by the El Paso Times,[18] Schuler was known to be tolerant of other faiths; speakers at the 1936 celebration of his 50 years as a Jesuit included the Episcopal bishop Frederick Bingham Howden and the Jewish rabbi Martin Zielonka.