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Many faces meet at Encuentro By Michelle Martin The 3,000 Catholics who flocked to Los Angeles July 6-9 for “Encuentro 2000” indeed found “many faces in God’s house.” Although previous Encuentros have focused on Hispanic Catholics, the Bishops’ Committee on Hispanic Ministry decided to broaden the scope of this year’s event by inviting representatives of all racial and ethnic groups. The national jubilee event was intended to “create a new vision” for the future of the Catholic Church, according to Los Angeles Auxiliary Bishop Gavino Zavala, national chairman of the event. The diversity of the church can be seen in the groups of Chicago Catholics who had planned to make the trip. Auxiliary Bishops John Manz and Joseph Perry were both scheduled to attend, along with Father Esequiel Sanchez, director of Hispanic ministry, and about 100 people from the archdiocese. “It’s a marvelous effort on the part of the Hispanic community to punctuate the millennium with an event of faith and vision that celebrates and brings together all the cultures in our church,” said Bishop Perry, a member of the Bishops’ Committee on Hispanic Ministry. Bishop Perry said he hopes the event spurs continuing efforts in the archdiocese. “The city being like it is, we have such a rich, rich multicultural population here,” he said. Juan Carlos Farias of the Office for Catechesis said he hoped to learn how to bring cultures together at the event. “I would say the main intention is to meet the diversity of cultures within the church,” Farias said before leaving for Los Angeles. “I want to learn from the African-American culture, and from all the other cultures.” Spurring the celebration of diversity has been a wave of immigrants in recent decades from Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Caribbean. The influx also sparked a greater awareness of the need for a more welcoming church environment for U.S.-born African-Americans and Native Americans. Hispanics compose from 30 percent to 38 percent of U.S. Catholics, according to a recent report by the Bishops’ Committee on Hispanic Affairs. Hispanics and Latin American immigrants form the fastest growing minority in the U.S. church. About 3.7 percent of U.S. Catholics are African-American, 2.6 percent are from Asia and 0.5 percent are Native Americans. The goal of the three-and-a-half day Encuentro 2000 was to begin breaking down barriers among the delegates representing dioceses across the country by stressing listening and sharing experiences as a step toward understanding and appreciating other cultures and ethnic groups. “The idea is to get to know one another and not wait around for the other person to become like me,’’ said Alejandro Aguilera-Titus, associate director of the Hispanic Affairs Office. “The goal of Encuentro is not to come up with issues and priorities, but to listen to the stories of others.” Such listening and sharing will be the goal of discussion groups called breakout sessions, some of which will be led by the 75 bishops planning to participate. Bishop Zavala said that while a growing number of parishes across the country now have more ethnically diverse congregations, individual ethnic groups often splinter off on their own, creating separate churches within one parish community. “Encuentro 2000 will help us explore how we can become one church, instead of parallel churches, to learn how two different ethnic communities in the same parish can come together as one, without becoming one and the same,” Zavala said. Catholic News Service contributed to this report.
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