SPRINGDALE — The congregation of St. Raphael Church in Springdale is overwhelmingly Hispanic and now the lay staff is growing as the parish builds its Hispanic ministry.
Miguel Moreno arrived in mid-January to fill the newly created position as director of Hispanic ministry. He and Father John Connell are still developing a robust job description, but it is clear there’s plenty to do in a congregation of 21,000 members, 85 percent of whom are Hispanic.
In his first days on the job, Moreno was busy meeting the parish staff and leaders of all the existing Hispanic programs — he took enough notes to fill the pages of two notebooks.
Miguel Moreno, new director of Hispanic ministry at St. Raphael Church in Springdale
Moreno’s new job is one of 100 new positions across the country being funded, in part, by a $15 million, three-year program from Catholic Extension. Also known as the Catholic Church Extension Society, the Chicago-based organization is a fundraising group helping support poor and isolated dioceses. According to its website, Catholic Extension has distributed more than $500 million to 91 mission dioceses, including the Diocese of Little Rock, since it was founded in 1905.
The society announced last fall the creation of the Hispanic Lay Leadership Initiative, designed to build Hispanic leaders in the U.S. Church. Already nearly 40 percent of U.S. Catholics are Hispanic, and some experts believe Hispanics may be the dominant ethnic group in the Church as soon as 2020. Yet, only 6 percent of all parish leaders are Hispanic, according to the society. The $15 million initiative aims to spur more involvement and create more parish leaders from the Hispanic community.
At St. Raphael, a grant will pay two-thirds of the Hispanic ministry director’s salary for three years — from 2013 to 2015 — while the parish pays the rest, Father Connell said in an e-mail interview with Arkansas Catholic.
By year’s end, Father Connell expects to have a Hispanic lay ministry of five people, including Moreno and Iris Negron, who began work Feb. 11 as director of Hispanic religious education. Negron, who lives in nearby Lowell, is a native of Puerto Rico.
Negron will work with Darla Lucas, who coordinates the English-speaking classes. Father Connell said more than 1,600 children are enrolled in classes.
The other Hispanic positions will include directors of youth ministry, liturgical ministries and parish organizations. The five lay positions will replace the Carmelite nuns, who have been assisting with various Hispanic ministries since 2002. The nuns will leave the parish in June.
Moreno has held similar roles, most recently in Joliet, Ill. He’s a native of Peru and once studied for the priesthood. He was a teacher for five years in Chiclayo, Peru, before coming to the United States to further his studies in education at the University of Illinois in Chicago and eventually accepted a position with the Diocese of Saginaw, Mich.
He noted that the Hispanic congregation at St. Raphael Parish is about 18,000 people — almost as large as the Hispanic population across the entire Diocese of Saginaw, which covers 11 counties.
Also, many of the Hispanics in Michigan were second- or third-generation immigrants, Moreno said. Second-generation families tend to be bilingual; by the third generation, English is usually the first language and some don’t even speak Spanish, he explained. At St. Raphael, most of the Hispanic parishioners are first-generation immigrants so Spanish is their first language; some don’t speak English, he added.
More recently, Moreno has worked with the Diocese of Joliet, outside Chicago. He’s finishing work on his doctorate in theology and hopes to wrap up his dissertation by April.
His family — wife Rosa and son Miguel — will join him in Springdale when the school year ends in June. They flew to Arkansas the first weekend in February to celebrate Miguel’s 12th birthday as a family and to see the community where they’ll be living soon.
Moreno, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen, said Springdale reminds him of Peru where big yards and gardens are common sights. He and Rosa believe it will be a good place to raise their son.
For St. Raphael, Moreno will work on things that might help bring the Hispanic and Anglo communities closer. Already the parish has an annual festival and an international dinner, both good opportunities to build bridges. He thinks some sports activities might be another possibility.
“We are just one parish,” he said. “The goal is to have just one celebration where everybody is welcome.”
