Latino Catholics are transforming the Church. It's ‘about time.'

Washington Post

7 days ago

DES PLAINES, Ill. — Latino Catholics are building more of their own institutions, including a major leadership-training group and the country's first Latino owned-and-run Catholic retreat center. Spanish-speaking Catholics are reviving shrinking White parishes. And the percentage of Latino Catholics born in the United States — not abroad — is rising.
This is a time of change for Latino Catholics, who now make up nearly 40 percent of the U.S. Church, and who some U.S. Catholicism experts predict are likely to become the majority in the coming decades.
Fourteen percent of Catholics born between 1928 and 1945 were Latino compared with 54 percent of Gen Z Catholics born between 1997 and 2005, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
'It's been about time,' Vicente Del Real, 35, said of the prominent, self-built Latino Catholic institutions becoming more common in the U.S. Del Real emigrated from Mexico as a teen to Illinois and founded Iskali, a group that supports young Latino Catholics, and Casa Iskali, a retreat center in Des Plaines, Ill. 'I could have said this 50 years ago and it would have been true. There should be another 200 or 300 organizations like ours around the country.'
But the U.S. Catholic Church is still facing significant challenges, including the disruptive impact of the Trump administration's aggressive immigration enforcement policies. Also, Latinos are a bigger share of the U.S. Catholic population, but younger Latinos are fleeing Catholicism, mostly to become religiously unaffiliated.
In 2010, 67 percent of Hispanic Americans were Catholic compared with 43 percent now, according to Pew Research.
When Rev. Esequiel Sanchez was ordained in 1995, less than 1 percent of the more than 1,000 priests in the Chicago archdiocese were Latino. Today, that figure is 14 percent. There needs to be more Latino leaders in the Church, said Sanchez, whose parents immigrated to Chicago from Mexico and who has been a priest in the area for 30 years.
For every non-Latino priest in the archdiocese, he said, there are about 1,300 to 2,000 Catholics, compared with 10,000 Catholics for every Latino priest.
Sanchez is rector at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a sprawling outdoor worship space that has drawn hundreds of thousands of visitors — mostly Mexican Catholics — each year since it opened in 2008. It is just the third parish built by Latinos in the 2-million-member Chicago archdiocese, he said.
After Pope Leo XIV's election, Sanchez said, a fellow cleric described being ecstatic to hear a pope speaking with a Chicago accent.
'I said: 'Why did you jump for joy?' and he said: 'Because he's one of us.' So I said: 'Now you understand how we feel — when you have someone who comes from your background, you can hear it.''
The elevation of Leo, born in the U.S. but heralded in his adopted Peru as 'the first Peruvian pope,' has also energized many Latino Catholics who hope he will appoint America's first Latino cardinal. Leo's background, including spending 20 years in Peru, allows him to better understand the complexity of being a Latino Catholic in America, some church experts say.
Leo has talked and written about being influenced by liberation theology, a political movement born in Latin America Catholicism in the 1970s that emphasizes helping the poor and oppressed.
But he is also an American who has voted in U.S. elections, roots for the White Sox and speaks English with a South Side of Chicago accent. Perhaps, some religious experts say, he will help unite U.S. Latino Catholics.
Before he was known as Pope Leo, Robert Prevost was part of a decades-long river of U.S. missionaries and clergy who responded to the call of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s to go to Latin America to focus on the needy and to help a part of the world with a priest shortage.
As Latino influence grows, church leaders will have to grapple with how to address the different needs and perspectives of foreign-born and native-born Latino congregants, religious experts said. That's a 'major shift,' said Hosffman Ospino, an expert on Latino U.S. Catholicism at Boston College.
More than half of Latino Catholics are foreign born, according to Pew Research, compared with 36 percent born in the U.S. But it's quickly shifting to a more native, English-speaking population, Ospino said.
These large, diverse groups have different experiences and perspectives, Ospino said.
Foreign-born Latinos are largely in 'a survival and adjustment' mode, he said, while U.S.-born Latinos are able to spend more energy acquiring social and economic influence. Those born in the U.S. may focus on preserving gains of their parents and grandparents, but sometimes distance themselves from the concerns of the immigrant community, he said.
'For 50 years, most of the Catholic Church's efforts to Latinos have been geared towards the foreign-born,' Ospino said. 'Retaining the U.S.-born will call for different commitments and approaches and understanding.'
The shift is already evident in Catholic parishes and organizations juggling which languages to use — Spanish or English.
Parishes offering some kind of Latino ministry climbed from approximately 15 percent in the 1980s to more than 27 percent today, Ospino said. But younger Latino Catholics often prefer English.
Over the last decade, the number of Latino congregants at Pro-Cathedral of St. Mary in Bismarck, North Dakota, has risen from about two dozen families to nearly 100. For 20 years, the cathedral offered Spanish-language Mass once a month, but in December it began offering them weekly, said Rev. Jared Johnson.
North Dakota has the fastest-growing Hispanic population in the country, according to Pew Research Center. The booming oil industry there attracted many Latino workers.
'One thing we said early on to our Spanish-speaking community is that we don't want this parish to just be a place where you come to Mass. We want you to feel welcome,' Johnson said. 'We want you to feel at home.'
To improve his Spanish sermons, Johnson has started practicing with a tutor for an hour a day. The services also include Spanish music. 'Everything from beginning to end is in Spanish,' Johnson said.
In 2020, the predominantly Latino St. Mary Parish of Davenport, Iowa, was facing dwindling finances. It was then absorbed by the nearby, mostly White, shrinking St. Anthony Parish — saving them both.
Gloria Mancilla, who runs a youth group and food pantry for the Latino community at St. Anthony's, said the number of kids at Sunday school has quadrupled — from 50 to 200 — since the merger.
'St. Anthony's was going to die,' Mancilla said. 'And now, seeing our children get involved [and that] has brought hope that the church is going to become bigger.'
St. Anthony's now has a Spanish-language choir and an annual Kermes, or carnival festival with Mexican food, activities and games. It hosts a Celebration of Our Lady of Guadalupe on Dec. 12, a special day for Mexican Catholics that honors the Virgin Mary. It's commemorated at the church with a mariachi band followed by a Spanish-language Mass.
'In order for [the church] to keep growing,' Mancilla said, 'we have to embrace the Hispanic church into the American church.'
It's unclear how the Trump administration's ongoing deportation efforts will affect the Catholic Church's growing Latino population, said Tim Matovina, a theologian at University of Notre Dame who focuses on Latino Catholics.
Parishes and Catholic schools around the country have reported falling attendance since President Donald Trump took office and stepped up immigration raids, he said. Bishops and other church leaders are struggling to balance advocating for migrants without drawing negative attention to those they're trying to protect.
'A number of Catholics support the administration's immigration policies, while many others find those policies reprehensible, increasing tensions in parishes and dioceses,' Matovina said.
Trump's support among Latino Catholic voters was more than 10 points higher in 2024 than in 2020.
San Bernardino Bishop Alberto Rojas, who leads about 1.6 million Catholics in Southern California, earlier this month issued a formal decree telling parishioners that those who face 'genuine fear of immigration enforcement actions' do not have to attend Mass. The Nashville Diocese made a similar announcement in May after a huge spike in traffic stops by law enforcement looking for migrants.
Last Sunday, a married man and woman sat in their pastor's Southern California office and cried as they spoke about how and why the only places they leave their home are to go to work and church. Church, they said, is where they get fed by their faith — which helps sustain them in this difficult time. The parish recently set up an extensive security protocol in case immigration agents enter the church, including stationing people on the altar and around the building with walkie-talkies.
'So always when we leave home ... it is to entrust ourselves to God and say 'Lord, you go ahead and whatever God wants,'' said the woman. The couple and parish spoke on the condition that they not be named for fear of deportation. They have lived in America for 30 years and have four U.S.-born children.
Arelis R. Hernández contributed to this report.