In 1969, Father Ralph Ruiz of San Antonio, Texas, began meeting informally with other Mexican American priests in the area.
The first official meeting of the group that would become PADRES was held from October 7–9, 1969 at LaSalle Catholic High School in West San Antonio.
Henry Casso of San Antonio, a founder of MALDEF and a former director of the Bishop's Committee for the Spanish-Speaking, Fr.
He personally wrote every Mexican-American priest and also sent invitations to white clergy who served predominantly Mexican American parishes.
He also wrote a letter to San Antonio Archbishop Francis James Furey to inform him of the congress, and another to the National Council of Catholic Bishops (NCCB), now called the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, which put forth a set of resolutions and included a fact sheet highlighting PADRES' concerns.
After being pressured, however, the NCCB agreed to set up an "informal liaison committee" of five bishops: Furey, Manning of Los Angeles, Green of Tucson, Medeiros of Brownsville, and Buswell of Pueblo.
Ruiz and the other hosts accommodated the other factions as best they could, but the radicals demanded an organization open to laity, which they wanted to call PUEBLOS.
Edmundo Rodriguez spent the night following the first day of deliberations drafting a constitution that defined a priest's organization.
The reasons for the exclusion were several: the laity were excluded because Ruiz and other founders knew that the opinions of priests carried much more weight with the hierarchy than those of the parishioners, and did not want their influence diluted.
At the conference, PADRES members identified three goals: The eradication of lack of education, an increase in the religious consciousness, and improvement of the social conditions of Mexican Americans.