by Father Pat Murphy
A recent issue of The Leaven was called “2011: The Year in Review.” I read and reread it from cover to cover and it seems to me that it missed quite a few events. And so here you have it — the 2011 Hispanic Ministry Year in Review.
• January — The 2010 census numbers indicated that we have grown another archdiocese, as over 100,000 in our area now identify themselves as Hispanic.
• February — We began the preEncuentro process as our office visited all 11 parishes with Hispanic ministry for some listening sessions to plan the future.
• March — We held an archdiocesan Encuentro at Savior Pastoral Center in Kansas City, Kan., where we brought together 145 leaders to evaluate the past and plan the future of Hispanic ministry here in the archdiocese.
• April — A group of religious leaders begin to meet around the issue of immigration. We would eventually form an organization called AIRR (Advocate for Immigration Reform and Reconciliation) and we even received a grant from Justice for Immigrants campaign of the U.S. bishops.
• May — On May 7, the Hispanic community gathered together at Sts. Cyril & Methodius Church in Kansas City, Kan., for the annual Pro Vida Mother’s Day Mass and procession.
• June — We celebrated another Impactos family retreat with about 200 people at the pastoral center and, in November, our archdiocesan team would bring the gift of Impactos to the Diocese of Salina, organizing its first retreat.
• July — We celebrated another chastity retreat with the True Love Waits program in which about 50 teens participated.
• August — In this month and the next, the Catholic Hispanic community was busy doing door-to-door missions in Topeka, Bonner Springs and Kansas City, Kan.
• September — Once again, we started up the second year of faith formation for 33 students of the Formation of Leaders for the New Evangelization and we also started up a catechetical formation program.
• October — The first anniversary of Mass in Spanish at Holy Trinity in Lenexa was celebrated with the joyful voices of our children’s choir.
• November — We celebrated the Day of the Dead for the Hispanic community in Bonner Springs at its local community center.
• December — Guadalupe celebrations were in full swing with all parishes reporting record-breaking numbers.
• January 2012: We started off the year running full steam with a two-day workshop — “The Word of God” — in Topeka; a weekend vocation retreat; and also a two-day workshop on human relation.
These are just a few of the highlights of 2011. And, yes, we could say more, but as The Leaven reminds us, there just isn’t enough space to print everything. Feliz 2012.
