Hispanic ministry: Growth and challenges

ST. AUGUSTINE | The fact that Spanish-speaking and Latino Catholics are fast becoming a major segment � already about one-third � of the Catholic population in the U.S. wasn�t lost on a range of Catholic Hispanic leaders gathered Oct. 17-20 for a regional encounter.

�This growth is a blessing but also it comes with a lot of challenges. We need to find a way to integrate the Hispanic community in fullness into the life of the Church in the United States,� said Gustavo Valdez, director of Hispanic Ministry for the Diocese of Charleston, which encompasses the entire state of South Carolina.

�We see the problem that the Hispanic community is growing in its own way and the Anglo community is trying to maintain parishes in the U.S. but we may not have that communion of communities, and sometimes we are trying to assimilate each other,� Valdez said.

Valdez was among more than 150 leaders in Hispanic ministry who met in St. Augustine Oct. 17-20 to share their pastoral and communications strategies � including many social media and Internet-based tools � and to take up the challenge to help step up the pace and effectiveness of Hispanic Church leadership across the country.

The event was the 17th Southeast Regional Encuentro for Hispanic Ministry hosted by the Miami-based SEPI, or Southeast Pastoral Institute.

�We are universal and that means we have to work in a way that we can live together as a Christian community, as a Catholic community and accept each other as God�s gift. We complement and enrich each other and only when we are together can we help the Church to grow,� Valdez told The Florida Catholic, reflecting on the issue of integrating Anglo and Latino U.S. Catholics.

SEPI was created by the U.S. bishops to help nurture ministry and educational programming in support of Hispanic Church life in nine U.S. states.

The opening Mass of the encuentro was celebrated outdoors, at the historic Shrine of Our Lady of la Leche, by St. Augustine Bishop Felipe J. Estevez and Orlando Bishop John Noonan. The shrine is where historians believe Spanish explorers celebrated the first Mass on what later became the continental U.S.

Participants also heard from a range of speakers including Mar�a del Mar Mu�oz-Visoso, executive director of the U.S. bishops� Secretariat for Cultural Diversity in the Church.

�We have a sizeable group of leaders here all committed to the new evangelization and we had very good discussions that they need to grow and be ministers for the entire Church in the different ministries, religious education, liturgy offices and to promote vocations to the Church,� Mu�oz-Visoso told The Florida Catholic.

She asked participants to go home and do an inventory of what kind of knowledge, attitudes and skills they need to be �good agents of the new evangelization and to be good missionary disciples.�

�Because a poorly-educated leadership is a poor leadership and so we need to prepare ourselves to be servants in the Church. We need to form and educate ourselves with a lot of prayer, training, certification programs and also to identify among ourselves who can make a good leader in our Latino communities and more broadly,� Mu�oz-Visoso said.

�Go back and look, and have your eyes open, your ears open and your heart open and identify those leaders who can be encouraged to step up and produce the priests we need, the leadership, the DREs, the youth ministers, the liturgy directors � start paying attention to who needs to be invited to think about ministry in the Church,� she said.