Church should focus on retaining Catholic Latinos

The Diocese of Pittsburgh’s “The Church Alive” campaign aims to “re-energize the way we teach and form in the faith” and “serve the poor and marginalized.” This is not what the Latino community has been experiencing in the diocese’s own backyard for the past few years.

In 2017, the diocese moved most of the Latino faith formation and religious services to the outskirts of the city — the closest services are now about 7 miles away from St. Paul’s Cathedral over a bridge and through a tunnel. One remaining service, a Mass in Spanish in the Greenfield/Hazelwood/ Oakland grouping, is likely also on the chopping block after over 35 years of servicing a continuing steady stream of Latino Catholics who study, work and live in Pittsburgh. This is even though the Latino community consistently fills the pews at Spanish Mass and even though Latinos are considered part of the solution in bringing young and engaged members back to the Catholic faith.

How can the Catholic Church be kept “alive” when a consistently faithful community is being pushed out of the diocese’s own East End grouping and practically out of the city limits?

Most Latino Catholics, particularly newcomers, innocently expect the grouping of the Mother Church of the Diocese of Pittsburgh to offer some basic ministry, such as Bible studies, faith formation classes and Masses either in Spanish or in a bilingual format. Yet the only Latino services offered within the Greenfield/Hazelwood/Oakland grouping is a single Mass in Spanish.

As an active member of the Pittsburgh Catholic Latino community since 1983, I find that a “Church Alive” campaign that has yet to minister to a growing, young, faithful flock, requesting religious services, is flawed at best, and alienated from the Catholic faith values at worst.

Bishop David Zubik should, for the sake of our church within the city of Pittsburgh and the Christian spirit that is a fundamental building block of our faith, keep and strengthen the Latino services within the Greenfield/Hazelwood/Oakland grouping.

N. CATHERINE BAZAN-ARIAS

Squirrel Hill