 |
||
| Carlos Hernandez, Hispanic ministry director for the Diocese of Green Bay, stands with Francisco Sanchez from St. John the Baptist Parish in Waunakee and Juan Estrada from Cathedral Parish in Madison during the recent diocesan training session for “V Encuentro” at Holy Name Heights in Madison. (Catholic Herald photo/Kevin Wondrash) |
MADISON — “We are in a very crucial day today,” said Edgar Martinez, positively looking ahead to the start of a training session on July 7 at Holy Name Heights in Madison.
Martinez, member of St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Madison, is helping to lead the efforts of the Diocese of Madison’s role in “V Encuentro” — a series of meetings that will take place over the next few years aimed at getting to know Hispanics and producing more involvement in the Catholic Church of its second largest and fastest growing community.
Encuentro is a national effort on behalf of the Catholic Church in the United States to respond to the needs of Hispanic Catholics and to strengthen the ways in which Hispanics respond to the call to the New Evangelization as missionary disciples serving the entire Church.
Spanish translation |
||
| A Spanish version of this article can be read here. |
Encuentro means “encounter” and this encuentro is the fifth such series of meetings held in the United States since the first in 1972.
According to the V Encuentro website (https://vencuentro.org), there are more than 38,000 Hispanic Catholics in the Diocese of Madison. That is about 15 percent of the total number of Catholics in the diocese.
The training session’s goal was to bring together the Hispanic ministry leaders from the 16 parishes in the Diocese of Madison that have them. The leaders included priests and laity.
Martinez said the first step in the process is “to organize everyone from the base, from the parish to the diocese and so on.”