René Henry Gracida

René Henry Gracida (born June 9, 1923) is an American Catholic prelate who served as Bishop of Corpus Christi from 1983 to 1997.

As a teenager, René Gracida was fascinated with the Jesuit martyrs portrayed in the novel The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper.

Required to choose a religious name, Gracida selected René Goupil, a French Jesuit lay missionary.

Gracida was consecrated on January 25, 1972 by Cardinal John Dearden, with Archbishop Coleman Carroll and Bishop Paul Tanner serving as co-consecrators.

[7] In June 1990, Gracida excommunicated two parishioners in the diocese who were providing legal abortion services for women, citing canon law.

In an interview, Aquino noted that he had recently won a $800,000 legal settlement against the anti-abortion group South Texas for Life, whose protestors had been picketing his house.

[2] On June 13, 2018, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops approved a resolution condemning the immigration policies of the Trump Administration.

Bishop Edward Weisenburger of the Diocese of Tucson suggested canonical penalties, which could include excommunication, for federal officials who separate children from families of undocumented immigrants.