Ponce de Leon Federal Bank, Pan Con Todo restaurant, and the Made In Colombia boutique line the sidewalk on Bergenline Avenue, which runs through the center of Union City, New Jersey. Flags from Puerto Rico, Mexico, and the Dominican Republic hang proudly in storefronts. Miniature Honduran flags dangle from the rear view mirrors of cars parked on the thoroughfare. More than 60 percent of Union City’s population is Latino. You don’t have to speak English to live here.
Just off Bergenline, there is a stately columned building that used to house the city’s Cuban community center, once a popular venue for traditional Hispanic celebrations like quinceañeras, the 15th birthday parties of Latina girls. Late one Sunday afternoon, three young women wearing traditional Muslim hijabs, or headscarves, stand on the steps of what for the past 17 years has been the Islamic Educational Center of North Hudson. READ FULL STORYRead more…
With the departures of the Franciscan Friars from St. Anthony parish on Milwaukee's south side and Father Eleazar Perez from St. Adalbert, the Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee is searching for ways to meet the pastoral needs of the largest Latino parishes in the archdiocese, said Father Pat Heppe, the vicar of clergy.
In addition, there's another opening for a Spanish-speaking priest at St. Patrick's in Whitewater, where Father Rafael Rodriguez has been reassigned to the seminary, he said.
"It all comes together at the same time, so what we are trying to do is organize the placement of priests so there's not a domino effect," he said. "We are trying to look at what is best for the parish and the priest."
It also comes during a time when here, as across the nation, it's the growing Hispanic community that's filling many pews at Catholic churches.
"We need to be on top of that growth, and we need to make sure the Hispanic community is spiritually attended to," Heppe said.
And while speaking Spanish is important, Heppe said that when he met with parishioners at St. Adalbert, they emphasized that what's needed is "a priest who understands the Hispanic heart."
At a Mass Sunday to welcome him to the Hispanic community, newly installed Archbishop Jerome E. Listecki told an overflow crowd at St. Adalbert: "I know that you are waiting for a pastor, and I know that the Latino community is very important to this archdiocese." READ FULL STORYRead more…
By nominating a Hispanic theologian, Miguel Diaz, to become the US ambassador to the Holy See. President Obama is posing a serious challenge to the Catholic Church, according to a Time magazine analysis. The President is trying to woo Hispanic Catholics, the magazine suggests, and thereby pull them away from the influence of the Catholic hierarchy while solidifying the strength of the Democratic party among Hispanic voters. In a crass example of politicization of religion, Time claims: "The American Catholic church may be the one institution more worried than the GOP about losing Hispanics." READ FULL STORYRead more…
One Christian Hispanic leader's appeal to Latinos to boycott the 2010 Census count is sending other Hispanic leaders into a panic.
The Rev. Miguel Rivera, chairman of the Washington-based National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders, has called on Hispanics not to participate in the Census. He wants to use it as a club to force Congress to move ahead on comprehensive immigration reform. So far, there has been little action on the issue, despite the hopes of Latino groups after the election of President Barack Obama that a bill would pass this year.
"This is the time to correct this immorality," said Rivera. "No comprehensive immigration reform passed, no participation in Census 2010." READ FULL STORYRead more…
A Hispanic Roman Catholic theologian who was an adviser to Barack Obama's presidential campaign will be nominated to serve as the next U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, the White House announced Wednesday.
Miguel H. Diaz, 45, an associate professor of theology at St. John's University and the College of Saint Benedict in Minnesota, would be the first Hispanic to serve as ambassador to the Vatican since the United States and the Holy See established full diplomatic ties in 1984. Diaz was born in Havana.
The announcement comes in the same week Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who was raised Catholic and attended Catholic schools, to the Supreme Court. She would be the high court's first Hispanic justice.
The selection of a Vatican ambassador rarely attracts scrutiny. But Diaz's nomination comes as tensions run high in the U.S. church over Catholics' voice in the public square and the politics of abortion. READ FULL STORYRead more…
