This short histroy if St Paul's is condensed from a history written by Rev. Larry Castillo Wilson in 1982 The story of Methodism in Socorro is some of the oldest Protestant history in New Mexico. The first Protestant minister to do any work in Socorro was a Methodist. Benigno Cardenas was a renegade Catholic priest who was converted to Methodism by Rev. E. George Nicholson, the first Methodist Missionary to New Mexico. In 1854 Cardenas preached the first Protestant sermo