The U.S. bishops’ Subcommittee on Hispanic Affairs conducted a survey of dioceses and archdioceses in the country’s 14 episcopal regions and released its results Aug. 21. The survey shows how Hispanic ministry has taken off across the country and that in most dioceses, there is a parish-based pastoral response to Hispanic Catholics.
Alejandro Aguilera-Titus, assistant director of Hispanic Affairs under the Secretariat for Cultural Diversity in the Church at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said the subcommittee sought to determine a baseline about the state of Hispanic ministry at the parish level.
He told OSV News that it was important to observe the implementation of the National Pastoral Plan for Hispanic/Latino Ministry, a 10-year plan that was approved by the U.S. bishops in June 2023, and “to see how that parish ministry will develop in the years ahead.”
The survey, which was conducted from last April through mid-August, included questions on the number of parishes in each diocese, the number of parishes offering Mass in Spanish, and the number of parishes with a Hispanic/Latino presence or ministry without a Mass celebrated in Spanish.
“It was very important to know what the starting point is, what is the number of parishes that already have a Sunday Mass in Spanish, which is the quintessential sign that we see that the Hispanic community has been welcomed as a community in a parish,” Aguilera-Titus said. “In communities where the Spanish Mass is already established, many other ministries emerge as well.”
He said the committee was pleased to find that almost 30 percent of the parishes in the country have a Sunday Mass in Spanish established.
An Aug. 21 press release from USCCB indicated that 175 surveys were completed, representing 100 percent of the Latin Catholic archdioceses and dioceses in the U.S. The survey results showed that 4,479 out of 16,279 U.S. parishes offered Sunday Mass in Spanish.
The survey also found that about 2,760 parishes have a Hispanic/Latino presence or ministry but do not currently offer Mass in Spanish and that “99 percent of the dioceses surveyed have several parishes that offer Mass in Spanish,” according to the release.
“We are talking about the fact that there is a Hispanic presence throughout the country, in the 175 dioceses (of the Latin Church) in the country” and that in most of those dioceses, “there is a significant response or parish ministry,” said Aguilera-Titus.
This survey focused on examining parishes serving Hispanics/Latinos in U.S. dioceses, but it also clarified that “several dioceses reported having missions or ministries serving Hispanics/Latinos extraordinary ministries or locations that are not identified as parishes” and that the survey did not intend to diminish those efforts.
Aguilera-Titus explained that in 2016-2017, a survey that was part of the V Encuentro process showed that about 4,485 parishes had some type of Hispanic ministry, although it did not specify data on Sunday Mass in Spanish, but rather Masses during the week or monthly Masses. This new survey indicates that 4,479 parishes have Sunday Mass in Spanish and that, in addition, almost 3,000 parishes have some type of Hispanic ministry or presence but do not have a Sunday Mass in Spanish.
“We are talking about the significant growth in the response that the Church is giving at the parish level,” Aguilera-Titus said.
More than 42 percent of U.S. Catholics self-identified as Hispanic, and it has been reported that this is the case for more than half of all U.S. Catholics under 30.
