Hispanic youths rejoice
'I think he'll be a lot of help for us'
Kristin Lukowski of The Michigan Catholic
Published December 8, 2006
Photo by Alejandro Torres-Antonio
Detroit-area Hispanic youths gathered June 8-11 at the National Encuentro for Hispanic Youth and Young Adult Ministry at the University of Notre Dame. | Southeast Michigan's Hispanic youths are excited about the potential for Hispanic Bishop Daniel Flores to work with them and get more young people excited about and active in the Church.
The Archdiocese of Detroit recently started using the ministry "Encuentro" to evangelize Hispanic youths. The outreach program is meant to identify leaders among Hispanic youths, train them and stress to them the importance of evangelizing their peers.
The mission of Encuentro – which in English loosely translates to "gathering" – revolves around peer-to-peer invitation and encounter retreats. The Encuentro movement so far has involved several dozen Hispanic young people from the Archdiocese of Detroit, who meet in parishes in Pontiac, southwest Detroit and Macomb Country to discuss how to invite their peers into the Church.
Encuentro participant Ofelia Torres, 20, is expecting that the fact Bishop Flores is fluent in Spanish will help the
Encuentro movement because not everyone involved speaks English. In addition to being able to understand both languages, he'll be able to understand both cultures, too.
She also expects that more people will want to get involved in Encuentro and in other Church activities. "He can help us out a lot," she said.
Bishop Flores said it was important to have Hispanic youths and youths in general engaged in the Church. "The encounter with Christ in the Church through the mystery of the Gospel preached or the sacraments lived is aimed, first of all, at giving all youth – but I think this is particularly important with Hispanic youth — that sense of the personal encounter with Christ, and I think that personal encounter with Christ is most profoundly experienced in the Communion of the Church," he said.
"The personal encounter with Christ always leads to a sense of sharing in His mission, and I have a great sense of hopefulness for the Church," he said. "I think Hispanic youth have a large role to play in helping their peers to recognize it's a gift to be able to serve.
"That generous spirit that the Gospel calls us to is a great privilege, and the more we can become consciously aware of sharing in that mission of Christ to share in the mission of Christ, and also to serve, is enriching for the whole culture of the United States. The more we can give for the good of another the more we will find ourselves."
Torres said Bishop Flores can bring a presence to the community, and help people understand what it means to be Catholic and who Jesus is. Plus, it will be helpful for the Hispanic community to have a bishop who represents them. "He can make (Church and activities) more attractive to many people," she said.
This past spring there was a state-wide retreat in Grand Rapids followed by a national Encuentro at the University of Notre Dame, which drew about 2,300 Hispanic youths and young adults and some from Detroit. People from the dioceses bishops represented cheered and applauded when the bishops' names were announced, Torres said, something she'd like to see happen in Detroit. "I'm looking forward to meeting him," she said.
Encuentro participant Georgina Montoya, 20, is hoping that since Bishop Flores is fluent in Spanish, it will get more young people involved in Encuentro who speak Spanish, too — and more youths in general.
"We have a lot of plans for the future," she said. "We want more people to be involved. It will be good for us."
She hopes he can be a good leader to help guide Encuentro. "We can talk to him," she said. "He can give us advice how we can be better leaders, too."
Ruben Roque, also a 20-year-old Encuentro participant who is still perfecting his English, said it is hard for him sometimes to express himself in English; to have a bishop who speaks both languages will be great for him and other young people like him.
Bishop Flores can get people involved who will be the future of the Church and can be an example to help lead them, Roque said.
"I think he'll be a lot of help for us," he said.
Bishop Flores also said one gift Hispanic youths have is their traditional culture of family and faith. But, they also need to have "discerning minds and discerning hearts" to stay critical of the modern culture, often which does not keep in line with the Gospel.
"Having a discerning mind and heart would involve having a sense of how the Gospel values that the Church upholds and consistently teaches can and should be used in making our judgments about what is good and how to pursue the good," he said.
"With these, they would have the good judgment to be able to move forward and take a proper role of leadership in the wider of culture of the United States and in the Church in being formative of the next generation."
Michigan Catholic reporter Robert Delaney contributed to this story.
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