Immigrants from Latin America and their children are transforming the Catholic Church in the United States. What that transformation looks like is still being worked out.

Although the percentage of Latino Catholics who are immigrants or first generation Americans among all practicing Catholics in the United States has increased from 26 percent in 2007 to 43 percent today, many Catholic Latinos in the United States are leaving the church. Approximately 43 percent of Latinos described themselves as Catholic in 2023, a significant drop from 67 percent in 2010.

“There is no greater evangelical, apostolic formation challenge than passing on the faith to young Latinos,” according to Timothy Matovina, a professor of theology at Notre Dame, who has been involved in Hispanic ministry for decades. “The best people to incite the faith of others are the people who have had a similar life experience. Young Latinos are the best ones to hand the faith on to other young Latinos.”

Mr. Matovina co-chairs Iskali, a thriving nonprofit organization that serves Latino youth and young adults. Iskali’s Chicago-based leaders are “anxious to be apostles and to evangelize,” according to Mr. Matovina. “It really is a shared leadership. That’s very key. When things only revolve around one leader, they don’t last.”

Iskali started at St. Charles Borromeo Parish in Melrose Park, Ill. After 15 years, it now serves young people in Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Iskali shows young Latinos how to be “active missionary disciples and transformative leaders,” according to its website. Key to the formation are Iskali’s four pillars: faith and community, mentorship and education, service to the poor, and sports and wellness.

For many participants in Iskali, the faith component begins with a retreat. But the ongoing formation is supported through community meetings and deeper study. The group’s leaders, recognizing the need for young Latinos to develop professionally and academically, also developed a mentorship and education focus. Iskali connects young people with professionals who serve as mentors and awards scholarships for community colleges and technical programs.

Once a month, Iskali organizes a day of service to those in need in the community. It could be feeding individuals experiencing homelessness, visiting seniors or bringing pizza to refugee families. More recently, the group has focused its efforts on helping immigrant families affected by increased enforcement measures, including deportation and detention.

“This is not something we do, but something we are,” Vicente Del Real, the founder of Iskali, told America, adding that serving others is transformative. “Service is the way Christians live. We have to be committed to those most in need.”

And sports are not merely a way to promote physical wellness. The organization rents gyms from parishes and community centers and offers a safe place to learn good sportsmanship, Mr. Del Real said. The organized sports gatherings can be a gateway for young people to learn about Iskali and perhaps attend a retreat.

Iskali best serves first and second generation Latinos, according to Beth Knobbe, a relationship manager with Catholic Relief Services who co-chairs Iskali with Mr. Matovina. Iskali does not exclude others intentionally, she said, but retains its focus.

“It’s peer-to-peer ministry that’s real accompaniment,” Ms. Knobbe said. “It’s not just language. It’s about life experience.”

Owning their faith

Isabelle Campos, now in her 20s, got excited about her faith after attending an Iskali retreat. Ms. Campos learned about the group from her sister, who went on an Iskali retreat in 2019. Her sister started an Iskali community at their parish, St. Bede the Venerable in Chicago. At first Ms. Campos was hesitant to get involved.

“In terms of my faith journey, I was kind or reluctant to accept God in my life,” she told America. “By the time I went on the retreat, it was actually perfect timing for me, because I was going through some pretty difficult things that had led me to believe just so many lies about myself. During my retreat, I felt reconciled in a way with God.”

After retreats, Iskali invites participants to attend weekly faith sharing groups. At first, Ms. Campos said she was reluctant to open up during the meetings. But with time, the people in the group became a consistent source of support as she dealt with other challenges in her life.

Eventually, Ms. Campos was invited to be the group’s coordinator. She doubted her ability to do so at first, but found that walking with others was nourishing in itself. Serving others in the group and on retreats helped her understand her purpose.

“We give so much of our hearts, our time, our energy, to see it all pay off by seeing these people experience God’s love for the first time, it’s incredible,” she said.

Ms. Campos is a second-generation immigrant. She speaks Spanish but is more fluent in English. She said that Iskali was culturally healing for her because she was able to spend time with others who have similar experiences.

“Many people who come [to Iskali gatherings] have experiences with the church, but in a way, it was their parents’ faith,” she said. “There wasn’t really a chance to make it their own. So I think that’s what Iskali does. It gives young people the opportunity to make this faith of their ancestors, of their parents and their grandparents, to make it their own.”

Language is a big part of that, she said, noting that Iskali tailors its ministry to the local population. More recent immigrants, for example, tend to still be learning English. In Chicago, Mr. Del Real said, most of the young people involved are of Mexican descent and were born in the United States. In Indianapolis, on the other hand, most were born in Central America.

The use of both English and Spanish in ministry reflects the reality of the young people Iskali serves, Mr. Del Real said in a bilingual interview with America, adding that many young Latinos know Catholic prayers in Spanish, but prefer to converse in English. Often Iskali events will feature a Mass celebrated in Spanish with an English-language homily. Still, leaders admitted that getting the right mix of languages is a struggle.

“I always tell people that the official language of Iskali is espanglish,” Mr. Del Real quipped.

A long formation

In Mexico, Mr. Del Real rode his bicycle for a mile and a half down dirt roads to get to school. For him, school was telesecundaria, a Mexican distance education program for children living in rural areas. Mr. Del Real would show up with a few classmates to watch a pre-recorded class in the state of Zacatecas. There were fewer than 20 students who attended the school, he said.

He was 15 when his family moved to Chicago and he began attending a school with thousands of students. He did not speak English.

“It was quite stressful!” Mr. Del Real said with a laugh, noting a doctor diagnosed him with anxiety at the time. He gravitated toward mathematics because he could understand the lessons.

Mr. Del Real’s experiences as an immigrant inform Iskali’s efforts, but so does his history with physical suffering. When he was 12, three years before his family moved to the United States, a doctor in Zacatecas diagnosed him with arthritis.

His older sister Silvia had the same diagnosis, which for her was painful and paralyzing, forcing her into a wheelchair for more than 35 years. As a child in Mexico, Mr. Del Real was her roommate and if she needed anything in the middle of the night, he would go and tell their parents.

“So I was a little afraid to be in a wheelchair,” Mr. Del Real said of having arthritis. Doctors in Mexico prescribed a treatment plan and, because they caught the disease when he was still young, he has lived a more or less normal life. After he moved to the United States, his family back home sent him his medicine because he didn’t have insurance.

As a teenager in Chicago, Mr. Del Real said he became a bit of a rebel. His concerned mother encouraged him to attend a retreat. Around that time—providentially, according to Mr. Del Real—his arthritis medication ran out before the next package arrived. Experiencing the retreat at the same time as that intense pain made it more profound.

“For the first time, I encountered a God that loved me,” he said, crediting the retreat director’s grounded, everyday approach to spirituality. “But God also invited me to live a life of purpose. As an immigrant, as a person with an illness, for the first time in my life I felt I could contribute something. Even though I didn’t speak English, I knew I had gifts to give and that God called me to serve.”

Mr. Del Real began working with other young people at his parish, including those born in the United States. Along with some of his peers, he formed Iskali, a Nahuatl word that means new life, new opportunity, resurgence. Our Lady of Guadalupe spoke to Juan Diego in Nahuatl, his native tongue, when she appeared to him in 1531.

After the awakening

Jaqui Romo heard about Iskali as an undergraduate at Dominican University in River Forest, Ill., but got more involved after meeting Mr. Del Real at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. After she attended the retreat with her husband, they both became more active.

She formed a group at her parish, Mother of the Americas in Chicago, with the support of her pastor, the Rev. Thomas Boharic. Her husband teaches catechism and coordinates the youth group with her. The retreat, she said, led her to a deeper understanding of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and it helped her heal wounds she did not realize needed to be healed.

Ms. Romo and her two siblings were raised by their mother. Her father was arrested and deported when they were young. It was hard without him. She later realized that she had begun to resent his absence. The retreat helped her process these emotions.

“Many young adults, teenagers even, have differences with their parents and aren’t able to figure out what those feelings are without them building into resentments,” Ms. Romo said. It comes out as anger or in making poor choices, she said, and festering resentments fracture family unity. “It’s like sinking in a hole if you don’t let it out,” she said.

Ms. Romo worked at Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in Chicago for a couple of years, but after she and her husband welcomed their first child, she needed more flexibility. She became the director of the Christian parenting initiative at Iskali. She described it as continuing to serve young adults even after they are parents.

“It’s a program that helps young adults feel like they’re welcome in Iskali even after those transitions in life like getting married and having children,” she said. “It’s maybe not the same as meeting every week, but there is still space for you.”

The offering includes workshops and helping parents pass on the faith to their children.

“People who stick around Iskali end up becoming family with each other and helping each other through difficult things that they lived through,” she said. Ms. Romo said the connection is deeper because of the shared faith and the experience of the retreat. But Iskali isn’t meant to be forever, she said.

“Iskali is a means to awakening your faith,” Ms. Romo said. “You shouldn’t really stay at Iskali your entire life. You have an encounter with God, you serve your church, but you don’t want to be 45 years old still going to Iskali. You want to continue.”

Leaders admit that Iskali isn’t for everyone. Some people attend the retreat and don’t come back, Ms. Campos said. Balancing busy lives, work and school is not easy, she said, even before committing to regular attendance at the weekly faith sharing groups. And sometimes, Ms. Campos said, people cannot separate their faith from Iskali.

“It can be difficult. My [Iskali] community is so close to my heart,” she said. “But God is not just found in my community. He is everywhere, and my relationship with him is beyond this earth, beyond everything.”

So far, Iskali have focused on cities and suburbs, but have yet to reach rural communities. It is still figuring out how to serve young people who often feel comfortable in different languages and come from disparate backgrounds, Mr. Del Real said, but he doesn’t spend a lot of time worrying about it.

“I’m not interested in doing anything that isn’t the will of God,” he said plainly. “If God wants us to be a national organization, we’ll go forward with that. If God wants us to be a small organization that serves the young people in the Midwest, so be it. We believe in a God who is just. If we do his will, he will give us the resources to continue forward.”

—–

J.D. Long García is a senior editor at America.

J.D. Long García is a senior editor at America.