A border fence could seal off an old Texas church that's open to all
MISSION, Texas - The white-haired priest stepped from the fog like a ghost, his robes and cowboy hat glowing in the predawn darkness like the sandstone chapel that he returns to again and again.
They call this one-room church rising above the banks of the Rio Grande "La Lomita," the hill. Its plank doors were open earlier this month, as usual. As the man in white entered, the darkness deepened. There's no light, no electricity inside, just steps from the river.
To the north rises a levee feeding orange groves that perfume the air. To the south, a tangle of chaparral lines the roiling, camo-colored river haunted by Border Patrol agents, smugglers and migrants. A priest once went missing in this brush - his horse found wandering - and he was forever known as the "Lost Missionary."
The man locals call the cowboy priest is not perturbed by the swirl of shadows in the mist. It's the chapel he worries about, a 153-year-old landmark that could be sealed behind a border fence scheduled to rise atop the levee next month.
It's where Father Roy Snipes was ordained in 1980. He likes to tell
