The Hispanic/Latino National Pastoral Encuentro Processes: Harbingers of Pastoral Conversion and Synodality

Abstract

The Hispanic/Latino National Pastoral Encuentro Processes: Harbingers of Pastoral Conversion and Synodality Allan Figueroa Deck SJ (bio) Over the past fifty years, the Catholic Church in the United States under the leadership of the Bishops Conference has planned and executed a series of national gatherings known as Encuentros modelled on similar events convened in Latin America under the auspices of the Conference of Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean (CELAM).1 In the wake of CELAM’s Medellín Conference in 1968, the Encuentros (of which there have been five) became the principle and most authoritative vehicle for the U.S. Catholic Church’s outreach to the Latino/Hispanic communities for implementation of the pastoral/ecclesial vision and reforms of Vatican II.2 [End Page 97] U.S. Hispanic church leadership have recognized the singular importance of the Encuentros. Twenty-seven years ago, in 1995 Archbishop Roberto González of San Juan, Puerto Rico described their impact in these words: The Tercer Encuentro Nacional (1985) led to the creation of a strategic plan for Hispanic Catholics in this country—the National Pastoral Plan for Hispanic Ministry—which emphasizes the Church as missionary, communitarian, and participatory.3 Church historian and theologian Timothy Matovina summarizes the fifty-year evolution of Hispanic Ministry in the United States in chapter three of his landmark study of the Hispanic/Latinos, Latino Catholicism: Transformation in America’s Largest Church, in which the story of the Encuentros looms large.4 Writing more recently in 2021, pastoral theologian Hosffman Ospino observed that “lack of awareness about the National Encuentros of Hispanic/Latino Ministry (aka “Encuentros”), and the processes of ecclesial discernment and collaboration at their core, remains a major gap in the ministerial formation as well as in our shared understanding of what it means to be American Catholics.”5 Interestingly enough, “mission, communion and participation”—the very words used by Archbishop González to describe the goals of the National Pastoral Plan for Hispanic Ministry back in the mid-1980s— are the very same ones Pope Francis used three decades later in the title of the XVI Ordinary Synod of Bishops to be held in Rome in 2023, the capstone event of the synodal process launched in 2021,“For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, and Mission.” Those three words name the goals of the synodal process he has set in motion. Through the synodal process that the Encuentros prefigured, Pope Francis is creating the condition for comprehensive pastoral conversion boldly articulated in his magna carta of renewal Evangelii Gaudium: [End Page 98] I dream of a “missionary option,” that is, a missionary impulse, capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for evangelization of today’s world rather than for her preservation.6 Synodality integrally linked to the all-embracing process of pastoral conversion that the Pope insists upon, is a concept retrieved from the church’s most ancient history and tradition and a fundamental feature of the church’s way of proceeding. The synodal way provides a promising means for achieving the ambitious transformation of the church, a new model for the third millennium, that highlights communion and participation and thus enables missionary outreach. In this reflection on the Hispanic/Latino Encuentro processes, I propose to review some select background and features of arguably one of the most significant forerunners and models in the United States of and for the renewal of Vatican II’s pastoral agenda sparked by Pope Francis’s energetic papacy.7 Click for larger view View full resolution Logo from I Encuentro (1972). Courtesy V Encuentro-USCCB Hispanic Affairs, Washington, DC. [End Page 99] The First Encuentro as Foundational and Seminal Event June 19, 2022 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the First Encuentro which took place at Trinity College in Washington, DC. Recalling this event in 2022 and celebrating it in the context of the church’s vigorous retrieval of the Second Vatican Council’s call for aggiornamento and Pope Francis’s pastoral agenda as outlined in Evangelii Gaudium provide an opportunity for further understanding and appreciation of the origins of the Encuentros, their...