U.S. Hispanic Catholics are future, but priest numbers dismal
Maria Chavira, a senior administrator in the Diocese of Phoenix, says Spanish-speaking Catholic parishes in her area are “bursting at the seams” and celebrates the emergence of Hispanics as the largest ethnic component of the church nationwide.
Throughout the Southwest, where the surge has been dramatic, Roman Catholic leaders are excited by the possibilities — and well aware of daunting challenges.
Hispanics now account for 40% of all U.S. Catholics, and a solid majority of school-age Catholics. Yet Hispanic Americans are strikingly underrepresented in Catholic schools and in the priesthood — accounting for less than 19% of Catholic school enrollment and only about 3% of U.S.-based priests.
In the Phoenix diocese, there are than 700,000 Hispanics out of a total of 1.2 million Catholics. Yet out of more than 200 priests, Catholic researchers counted only seven American-born Hispanics.
Extensive efforts are under way to narrow the demographic gaps. They have been highlighted in a nearly completed four-year study by U.S. Catholic bishops seeking to strengthen the church’s engagement with Hispanics.
“We have a lot of opportunities,” said Chavira, who oversees the Hispanic Mission Office and other departments in the Phoenix diocese. “There may be a little turbulence ahead, but we’re going to make it.”
Chavira is among more than two dozen Catholic leaders and activists who shared their thoughts about the Hispanic Catholic phenomenon with The Associated Press, some in telephone interviews and others face to face, during a reporting trip to Arizona and Texas’ Rio Grande Valley.
Evidence of the change can now be seen each December, when thousands of Hispanic Catholics dance and march in downtown Phoenix to celebrate Our Lady of Guadalupe. It can be seen in fast-growing, heavily Hispanic communities in Phoenix’s western suburbs.
Nationwide, more than 1,200 Catholic schools have closed in the past decade, usually under financial stress. Yet in the suburb of Avondale, enrollment is surging at a handsome new Catholic high school.
The school, named for Pope John Paul II, opened in 2018. About 70% of its 220 students are Hispanic; plans call for rapid expansion to accommodate an enrollment of 1,000.
“We’re serving people who’ve been underserved in this nation,” said the principal, Sister Mary Jordan Hoover. “These young people are trying to learn to be the next teachers, the next administrators, writers, doctors. They’re dreaming big.”
The hopefulness contrasts with circumstances in some other regions. Hundreds of parishes have closed in the Northeast and Midwest. The long-running clergy sex abuse scandal has forced more than 20 dioceses across the U.S. into bankruptcy since 2004, most recently in the Northeast.
The scandals haven’t spared the Southwest. The dioceses in Tucson, Arizona, and in Santa Fe and Gallup, New Mexico, are among those which declared bankruptcy.
But in states along the Mexico border, the past scandals don’t diminish the excitement over a future Hispanic-accented Catholic church. More than 400 new parishes have opened since 1970 in the border states, and many Hispanic Catholics were elated by the recent election of Mexicanborn Los Angeles Archbishop José Gómez as the first Hispanic president of the bishops’ conference.
“It’s the tale of two churches,” said Hosffman Ospino, a professor of Hispanic ministry at Boston College. “In Boston, I see a Catholicism that’s very reserved. In the Southwest it’s very public, very expressive.”
He said the median age for Hispanic Catholics in the U.S. is 29, compared to 55 for white non-Hispanic Catholics.
“You’ve got a lot of energy,” he said. “You’ve got people who want to be recognized and have a voice in the decisions of their church.”
Across the Southwest, there’s tension arising from the restrictive immigration policies imposed by President Donald Trump’s administration along the U.S.-Mexico border. Those moves have angered Catholic activists who assist migrants and trouble many Hispanics in the U.S. with relatives who lack legal immigration status.
“I wish our bishops would be a more solid voice denouncing this,” said Sister Norma Pimentel, who runs a respite center for migrants in McAllen, Texas.
Looking ahead, Pimentel believes Hispanics could energize the entire U.S. church.
“One thing we haven’t lost here is the sense of community,” she said. “I hope young Catholics can sustain that and take joy in celebrating their faith. That’s the future of our church.”
••• A major challenge for the Catholic hierarchy: trying to convince more young men among the booming Hispanic population to become priests.
An example of that challenge: 30-year-old Diego Piña Lopez, of Tucson. He’s devoted his life to the Catholic tenet of supporting the dignity of all people, including asylum seekers who visit Casa Alitas, the Catholic-run shelter in Tucson where he works.
Growing up in Nogales, Arizona, he sometimes considered becoming a priest, but opted instead to pursue graduate degrees in social work and public health. Why not the priesthood? “I wanted to have a family,” he said.
It’s a common response heard by Catholic recruiters.
By the latest count of the bishops’ conference, there are about 37,300 U.S.-based priests. Among them are roughly 3,000 Hispanics — more than 2,000 of them foreign-born. The number is startling small, given Hispanics’ 40% share of the U.S. Catholic population.
The gap may close, but perhaps not quickly. According to Catholic researchers at Georgetown University, 14% of the men scheduled to be ordained in 2019 were Hispanic — and many were foreigners.
One problem, said Hosffman
Ospino, is that Hispanics in the U.S. have lagged behind other groups in regard to college-level education, limiting the pool of young men qualified for seminary.
“As long as the education levels of the Latino community are low, very few will become priests or teachers,” he said.
But even as the second and third generations of many Hispanic immigrant families do pursue higher education, other factors are at play.
“With those generations, there’s extremely heavy pressure to think more about economic success than the glory of God,” said Daniel Flores, the bishop of Brownsville, Texas. “We need to teach them the concept of service, rather than you need to earn as much as you can.”
Brownsville is among the nation’s most heavily Catholic dioceses. About half of its roughly 120 priests are Hispanic, but about twothirds of those are foreignborn.
Flores advises recruiters to personally engage with potential seminarians and their parents.
“It’s not enough to just send them an email or announce a vocations retreat,” he said. “You need to go to invite them and learn from them.”
The Phoenix diocese’s vocation office — which recruits and supports seminarians — is headed by the Rev. Paul Sullivan, who also ministers to an overwhelmingly Hispanic parish. Of his latest batch of 11 seminary graduates, five are U.S.-born and five are from Mexico.
Sullivan acknowledges that desires to have a family and earn money dissuade some men from considering seminary.
“Priesthood is not your average path to take,” he said.
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