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Indiana (Agenzia Fides) - About 2,300 young people and 20 bishops attended a 1st National Hispanic Youth Pastoral Meeting (PENPJH) at Notre Dame University Indiana, 8-11 June, Fides was informed by Fr Manuel Peláez, Coordinator Hispanic Ministry for Young Adults in the archdiocese of Miami. The Meeting, with the slogan "Together to Weave the Future” was the culminating event of an 18 month "encounter-conversion-communion-solidarity" process at the level of parish, movement, diocese and region (see Fides 7/6/2006).
According to the Committee for Hispanic Affairs of the US Catholic Bishops’ Conference 41 percent of Catholics under 30 in the US are Hispanic. Since 1960 71 per cent of the growth of the US Church has been of Hispanic origin. It is estimated that in fifteen years time more than 50% of the US Catholic Church will be Hispanic. With this in mind the Meeting had the following objectives: identify and reflect on the needs of Hispanic Catholic youth and the contribution they bring to the Church; promote leadership and youth formation and youth pastoral to reach young people distant from the Church; develop a common vision and pastoral principles to guide the ministry; identify and promote pastoral models to accompany Hispanic youth, develop strategies and assign adequate resources to equip parishes, dioceses, movements and other organisations involved in the ministry with Hispanic youth.
"You make up almost half the young Catholics of our country" said Bishop Placido Rodríguez, Bishop of Lubbock (Texas), chairman of the US Bishops’ Committee for Hispanic Affairs in his welcoming address during which he read a letter from the Apostolic Nuncio which included a blessing on behalf of Pope Benedict XVI. "If the Church sustains you today, tomorrow she will find in you faithful leaders to continue her mission. Let us walk ahead then, as the Church and as faithful disciples of Jesus" the Bishop said. Cardinal Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras said "young people have much to offer the Church… they have something to share: their faith and their enthusiasm for evangelisation. The young person is full of life". Archbishop José H. Gómez, Archbishop of San Antonio, Texas, urged the young people not to be afraid to be saints, new evangelisers, missionaries.
Also present at the meeting representatives of CELAM who illustrated questions connected with the emigration of young people to the United States and spoke of future collaboration between CELAM and Hispanic youth leadership in the US.
According to Re Malavé president of the organising committee for the 1st National Hispanic Youth Pastoral Meeting, "this is not the end of a Meeting it is the beginning of a new era in Hispanic Youth Pastoral". The interventions and conclusions of the Meeting soon to be published by the US Bishops’ Conference will serve as guidelines for Bishops all over the country to help them respond concretely to the needs of young Hispanic Catholics. (RG) (Agenzia Fides 10/7/2006)
