Scenes from the first day of the Fifth National Encuentro… The Tablet team was in place as Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller of San Antonio, Texas, lead the opening prayer, and Editor Jorge I. Dominguez-Lopez had a chance to interview Sister Norma Pimentel.
Speaking with The Tablet on the first morning of the V Encuentro, Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Texas, highlighted elements of the Hispanic contribution to the Church in the U.S., and also enumerated its ongoing challenges.
Standing under a “Bienvenidos V Encuentro” banner, Catholics waited anxiously to check-in at the national Fifth Encuentro in Grapevine, Texas.
Texas may be known as a state of “Lone Rangers,” but for Bishop Michael Olson of Fort Worth, he’s hoping the V Encuentro, taking place in his diocese this week, will be a chance to shed rugged individualism in the American Catholic Church for an embrace of a larger community.
This week’s Texas gathering will bring together some 3,000 Catholics to conclude a four-year nationwide process of Hispanic/Latino missionary activity, consultation, leadership and pastoral discernment that took place in parishes, dioceses and episcopal regions in the United States.
If two of the youngest Hispanic delegates representing the ‘Diocese of Immigrants’ at V Encuentro are a reflection of the pulse of the Church’s future, here’s what one might discover: whether they were born here or not, their identity as missionaries within the universal Catholic Church is as obvious as whether or not they want to attend either English Mass or Spanish Mass on any given Sunday.
Three thousand Hispanic Ministry delegates representing more than 165 dioceses are meeting in Grapevine, Texas, at the V National Encuentro of Hispanic Latino Ministry (Fifth Encuentro), Sept. 20-23.
THE TIME IS here. This Sept. 20-23, more than 3,000 Hispanic Catholic leaders and others from nearly every diocese across the country will meet in Dallas, Texas, for the V National Encuentro of Hispanic/Latino Ministry (V Encuentro) main meeting.
If you attend any major Catholic gathering throughout the United States, chances are that talks are offered in the two predominant languages in which most Catholics worship in the country, namely English and Spanish.
CATHOLICS IN THE United States have excelled in developing amazing structures and resources for pastoral leadership formation at all levels in seminaries, houses of formation, colleges and universities, pastoral institutes, online programs and catechetical formation initiatives, among others.
