After its establishment in 1874, the Diocese of San Antonio needed to find a system for training clergy to care for its people, sending them on a temporary basis to various institutions in the region over the next quarter-century.

In 1915, faced with a severe shortage of priests and a booming Catholic population due to refugees from the Mexican Revolution, John W. Shaw, the Bishop of San Antonio, decided to open a seminary in his own residence, teaching university level studies.

As early as 1911, he had declared that: “I have laid down a rule that for the future no student will be ordained until such time as he can speak Spanish fluently.”[2] Five years later, the school was given the name of St. John's Seminary and was relocated to a site adjacent to Immaculate Conception Mission in the same city.

To prepare students for ministry to the Hispanic population of the country, the Mexican American Cultural Center was opened on the Woodlawn Avenue campus in 1972.

[2] Today alumni from Arizona, California, Colorado, Louisiana, Virginia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina and Texas, as well as El Salvador, serve the Catholic populations of their dioceses.