Communicators advised to ‘challenge your assumptions’ for reaching Latino Catholics

ATLANTA (OSV News) — Earnestly listening to Latino Catholics in the church, including their perspectives in Catholic content, and showing their diversity in media visuals are crucial ways for Catholic media to reach those audiences, Latino Catholic leaders told Catholic communications professionals during a panel discussion June 20.

“Challenge your assumptions. Don’t begin with your assumptions. Don’t make assumptions. Get to know the community,” urged panelist María del Mar Muñoz-Visoso, executive director of the Secretariat of Cultural Diversity in the Church for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

“Build relationships in the community. Get to know your Hispanic/Latino population, which is very diverse. We come in all sizes, colors, flavors, political bents, theological bents, etc., etc.,” she said. “Be open and be aware … that they vary widely from diocese to diocese and from area of the country. The Latinos in Miami are probably not very like the Latinos in Grand Rapid, Michigan, or in California.”

Held at the Catholic Media Conference, the Catholic Media Association’s annual gathering, the hourlong panel discussion with a question-and-answer session titled “Communicating the Good News con Nosotros!” aimed to help Catholic communicators improve their reach to Latino audiences.

Besides Muñoz-Visoso, speakers included Detroit Auxiliary Bishop Arturo Cepeda; Gabriella Escalante, youth ministry coordinator for the Florida-based Southeast Pastoral Institute; José Manuel De Urquidi, founder and president of the Juan Diego Network; and Rafael Roncal, editor of El Pregonero, the Spanish-language newspaper for the Washington Archdiocese. Longtime Catholic journalist Ana Rodriguez-Soto, who recently retired as editor of the Florida Catholic, Miami edition, moderated the bilingual panel.

Rodriguez-Soto said the purpose of the panel was not to “belabor the obvious” of why Catholic communicators should aim to reach Latinos, who make up a large and growing portion of the U.S. church, but rather to share ideas on how to reach them.

Data from Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate shows 63 percent of U.S. Catholics under age 27 are Latino. Meanwhile, Latino Catholics are also leaving the church at high rates.

The panelists underscored the importance of listening, inclusion and accompaniment as they shared their unique experiences of communicating within the Latino community.

Latino Catholics in the U.S. are not a monolith, panelists emphasized, with Rodriguez-Soto noting the diversity among panelists themselves, all of whom were born outside of the U.S. in Central and South America, or Spain. Rodriguez-Soto was born in Cuba but raised in Miami.

“What does ‘Latino’ mean?” asked De Urquidi, who founded Juan Diego Network to advance Catholic multimedia content for Latinos. “That’s where we need to start first of all. … Don’t think that ‘Latinos’ are one thing. That’s very important.”

The common strategy of solely translating English content into Spanish is insufficient because of the diverse ways Latinos speak and think, depending on their culture and country of origin, he said. De Urquidi urged communicators to know their audience and do their “homework.”

There are “27 different countries that we come from, right? Does that mean migrants, second generation, or third generation — that means a lot of different things. Who are you targeting?” asked De Urquidi, who is from Mexico and lives in Dallas.

Communicators should approach their Latino audiences with, “I see you, I want to listen. I want to know about your story,” including their hopes and aspirations, said Bishop Cepeda, who was born in Mexico and raised in San Antonio. “This is exactly where we begin to journey with our people.”

The bishop encouraged communicators to begin with intentional efforts to reach their Latino audience, be motivated by their heart, and accept that success requires time and patience.

Escalante, who was born in Venezuela and lives in Miami, spoke about her experience helping more than 100 Latino young adults create an annual bilingual book of prayers and reflections for Lent. For young people, she said, “we need them to know that their voices are heard and are important.”

The book demonstrates to youth and adults that young people “have that search too; they are seeking for something. Seeking for answers,” she said.

“Just listen to the young people, and not only tell them that it is important to listen to them, but give them the mic. Give them the opportunity to share their ideas,” Escalante said. “And in the process, walking with them, you’re going to form them. You’re going to help them grow.”

Roncal, who was born in Peru and now lives in Washington, spoke about the progression of El Pregonero, which was launched in 1977 out of Washington’s Spanish Catholic Center. Today it continues to serve not only as a Spanish-language Catholic newspaper, but also a community newspaper and tool for helping Latinos address issues of social justice in Washington.

De Urquidi, who has contributed his entrepreneurial and communications expertise as a Latin American delegate to the Synod on Synodality at the Vatican, said that communicators need to determine and understand their audience when deciding what forms of media to use to reach them. He said he has generally found success reaching Latinos with the messaging service WhatsApp instead of email and newsletters.

Muñoz-Visoso, who was born in Spain and lives in Washington, said that communicators should not assume that “English-speaking Catholics are not interested in what’s going on with Hispanic/Latino Catholics.”

“The majority of Hispanic/Latinos in this country are U.S. born and raised, and their dominant language is English or bilingual,” she said. “While serving the immigrant population in Spanish is a necessity, so is catering to the second and third generation, and beyond, who are English dominant, if we don’t continue to lose them at a rapid pace. Believe me, we have done a very poor job of communicating with this group in general in the Catholic Church.”

Muñoz-Visoso said church communications and ministries to Latinos should be intergenerational, “understanding both the language of preference, but also the platforms and type of media consumption they have, which is very different by generation.”

Latinos often read in more than one language, get their news online and often in English, and through social media.

“It’s not just about their (Latinos’) needs and preferences, but it’s also about our identity as the Catholic Church,” she said. “Our content, our visuals, our messaging need to reflect the rich diversity of communities, activities, ethnicities in Catholic cultural and religious traditions present in the communities we’re called to serve.”

Muñoz-Visoso encouraged communications professionals to “get smarter” about sharing content by including Latino secular media in their announcements, building a network of Latino media contacts and organizations, and sharing news, including quotes, in Spanish.

Most people who work in U.S. Spanish-language media are bilingual or multilingual, she noted.

“Given the fact that large numbers of Hispanics identify still as Catholics, I’ve found, in my experience, that the Hispanic media — and Hispanic reporters in the secular media — are usually and generally more interested than others in what the bishops, or the church in general, have to say,” Muñoz-Visoso said.

“They may agree or disagree — they’re certainly not a captive audience by any means — but they just might pay attention and pick up church-related stories more often than the traditional networks because of the populations they cater to, but also because of their own cultural affinity,” she said.

Muñoz-Visoso highlighted communications efforts supporting the V Encuentro — the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ multiyear discernment process of pastoral priorities for Latino Catholic leaders that included a national meeting in 2018 and led to a national pastoral plan approved by the U.S. bishops in 2023. She said the Encuentro’s “multi-pronged, interactive approach” is a communications success story, in part because “the local participants became the protagonists,” and communications moved dynamically from leaders to local volunteers, and back.

“We are a story telling people,” she said. “Tell our story. Help us tell our story in the first person.”

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