V Encuentro

MADISON  The diocesan Office of Hispanic Ministry has wasted little time in addressing the five pastoral priorities for serving the ever-growing Spanish-speaking population in the Church of Paterson that were selected during a diocesan gathering last year of 400 delegates from Hispanic ministries in 32 parishes. The gathering was part of V Encuentro — a four-year process to help revitalize Hispanic ministry in the U.S. Their priorities for the Diocese focused on the areas of social assistance, faith formation, marriage and family life, youth and young adults and the Office of Hispanic Ministry.

So far, Hispanic Ministry has launched numerous programs from helping to strengthen marriage and family, to offering more opportunities for faith formation, to providing greater outreach to youth and young adults and to expanding of the Office of Hispanic Ministry, which is located in St. Paul Inside the Walls: the Diocesan Center for Evangelization here and at St. John Paul II Pastoral Center in Clifton. The efforts of the office jumped into a higher gear on Feb. 4 with the hiring of a full-time coordinator of faith and leadership formation, Maria Moncaleano of St. Anthony of Padua Parish in Passaic [see related story, page 5].

In recent months, Moncaleano and Ivannia Vega-McTighe, assistant director of diocesan evangelization and assistant director diocesan Hispanic Ministry, have been announcing this good news in presentations that they have been making around the Diocese — notably at a meeting in Spanish of delegates and parish leaders and to Bishop Serratelli and the Diocesan Pastoral Council in English. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is sponsoring the national V Encuentro process.

“This [V Encuentro] has been the work of the Hispanic community in the Diocese. We are working to create missionary disciples [the goal of the process] by becoming leaders in the community and reaching out to people on the margins,” said Vega-McTighe, who has been coordinating the V Encuentro in the Diocese with Moncaleano and other Hispanic leaders. “We are trying to determine the needs of Hispanics in the Diocese; every parish has different needs. We want to work together in one direction with one mission,” she said.

In the past year, Hispanic Ministry has started to address the diocesan priority of expanding programs to strengthen marriage and family life by offering courses in Spanish on “God’s Plan for a Joy-Filled Marriage”; “Living God’s Plan,” which teaches life skills to couples; and an introduction to Natural Family Planning. The ministry also started addressing another priority — increasing outreach to youth and young adults — by encouraging more parish ministries and participation in Corazon Puro, an outreach of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, Vega-McTighe said.

Also, Hispanic Ministry began addressing another priority — more opportunities for faith formation — by offering ongoing training for catechists; a course for a Certificate in Hispanic Ministry with a specialization in evangelization through St. Paul’s and the College of St. Elizabeth in Convent Station; a Bible study, “A Walk through the Bible with Mary”; and a conference for pastoral musicians. In addition, it started diocesan-wide devotions for Feast of the Immaculate Conception on Dec. 8 and Our Lady of Guadalupe on Dec. 12, both at St. Paul’s, Vega-McTighe said.

To address another priority — hiring full-time staff to support the Office of Hispanic Ministry, Hispanic Ministry hired Moncaleano, who has helped lead V Encuentro at St. Anthony’s and in the Diocese, since it began in 2017. Her duties in the office include coordinating existing formation programs and will include helping to expand those offerings and to brainstorm ideas in formulating the Diocese’s long-term action plan for addressing the pastoral priorities for the Diocese, the region and the U.S. from the national V Encuentro conference, which was held last fall in Texas, she said.

“This job is a dream come true. Hispanic Catholics here are such a vibrant community. They are dealing with many issues — immigration, poverty and their dreams in the U.S., as well as the trauma of war and violence that they experienced in their home countries. I want to be more present in the community,” Moncaleano said. “The people are so hungry for knowledge. My passion is teaching and I want to share my faith,” she said.

At the diocesan gathering at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Paterson in April 2018, delegates also called on the Diocese to address another priority: social assistance — helping immigrants with immigration, domestic violence, civil cases, mental and physical health and substance abuse though agencies such as diocesan Catholic Charities. Hispanic Ministry is still devising ways to address this priority, Vega-McTighe said.

“Our statistics suggest that we need to move our programs northward and westward in the Diocese. That’s because there are more and more Spanish-speakers in towns in Morris and Sussex counties,” said Vega-McTighe, who noted that today, Hispanics make up 70 percent of the populations in Dover and 35 percent of Newton.

Hispanic Ministry will begin the years-long process of formulating an action plan to address the priorities of the Diocese and region, as well as the five as-yet-unnamed five priorities for Hispanic Ministry in U.S., as selected by delegates, including those from the Diocese, at the national V Encuentro convention in Texas last year. Dioceses in the U.S. are waiting for the release of a report that lists the priorities. Upon receiving the report, regional V Encuentro will provide training for practical applications of the national priorities to diocesan Hispanic ministries, which then will train its parish representatives, Vega-McTighe said.

In the Diocese, the V Encuentro started in early 2017, when Hispanic Ministry trained facilitators to lead the process in small groups at their respective participating parishes. Then, Hispanic ministries in these parishes held gatherings to brainstorm possible pastoral priorities for their own faith communities. Last April delegates from those parishes came together for a historic diocesan-wide gathering at St. John’s, where they proposed five pastoral priorities for Hispanic ministry in the Church of Paterson, Vega-McTighe said.

“V Encuentro has revitalized and changed the way we think at St. Anthony’s. The parish has always been united, but now we work together with a greater understanding that we are one community working in different areas to bring to people the message of Christ,” Moncaleano — master of ceremonies of the diocesan gathering, who also helped train parish facilitators — told The Beacon last year. “It was the first time that 32 parishes got together with one voice to prioritize the needs of the local Hispanic community,”

Recently, Moncaleano added, “My sentiments are still applicable today for all the parishes that participated in V Encuentro.”

Following that gathering, diocesan delegates attended the Region 3 gathering of representatives from New Jersey and Pennsylvania in the Trenton Diocese and helped select priorities they carried with them to the national gathering. Nationally, the V Encuentro process will conclude in 2020, when the USCCB reflects on and evaluates all the suggestions and then selects some of them and compiles them in resource materials for dioceses, parishes and other Catholic organizations, she said.

According to Vega-McTighe, a major supporter of Hispanic Ministry has been Father Paul Manning, St. Paul’s executive director and diocesan vicar for evangelization. He told The Beacon, that despite staff reductions in the Office of Evangelization in recent years, he was determined to “keep space in the budget and a position open to beef up two areas: Hispanic Ministry and Faith Formation.”

“We were finally able this year to bring Maria Moncaleano on board. Her presence and her background and experience are great additions to the competence and expertise of Ivannia Vega-McTighe, who has worked in multiple areas of evangelization during her lengthy tenure with the Diocese. Both of them will be working together in faith formation, catechesis and evangelization, with necessary attention to our Spanish speaking communities. Their ability and energy together has been evident in the Diocese’s successful involvement in the National V Encuentro,” Father Manning said.