My father’s hands are rough, thickly calloused and cracked from decades of work. They bear witness to the daily sacrifices he made to support his family and build up this country. Rain, snow or shine, my father made concrete slabs for a living—the kinds used for highways and stadiums.
“You’re all going to have office jobs one day,” my father used to tell my siblings and me, trabajos de oficina. It was his way of saying we would make it. We would be sheltered from the elements while we worked, unlike him.
As a first-generation immigrant from Mexico, my father’s aspiration for us was that through education, we would contribute to the good of the United States and attain the American dream: to break the cycle of generational poverty and live peaceful lives dedicated to serving God and our families.
Most of my siblings would go on to become engineers. I began university studies with a declared major in architecture, and I know it gave my father great pride and fulfillment to know that we, a family of former migrant field workers, went from laboring in the California sun picking cucumbers to designing satellites and city blocks. We would rely on our minds more than our hands. Our professions would be safe, comfortable and respected.
Even as a lifelong faithful Catholic, he found it difficult to understand why several years later I left architecture in favor of theology. He eventually understood that I felt called by God to pursue a vocation of lay ecclesial ministry, primarily through teaching and the accompaniment of young people. It gave me peace to know I had his support, but it was difficult to shake the unspoken pressure that is all too familiar to so many second-generation U.S. Latinos: Our parents’ dreams are riding on us.
They left their home country and their family for our sake, and as first-generation university students, it is on us to bring forth the fruits of that sacrifice. Perhaps originating within ourselves more than from our parents, there can exist an inherent guilt that comes from pursuing a career that will not be seen, at least through the eyes of the world, as lucrative or as respectable as our parents might have hoped. My parents would not be able to say I was an architect, a lawyer or a doctor. God surprised them with something that perhaps they never imagined when they migrated: a son who chose ministry as a way of life.
This is perhaps the first in a long line of obstacles for many young Latino Catholics today, who might otherwise devote themselves more fully to ministry, with or without a degree. The questions, verbalized or not, make us doubt. Will I be able to financially support a family doing this? Will my family support me? Will they understand? Should I pursue something better paid and do this in my free time? What will I even do with a theological degree? On top of this internal conflict, those in positions of church leadership—clergy and lay—may unintentionally limit or discourage young Latinos from ecclesial leadership.
Years ago I served as director of formation for a large, predominantly Hispanic parish in Chicago. The pastor and I made it a top priority not only to engage the young people in the parish but to invite them into active ministry. Both the first Communion and the confirmation program bustled with budding catechists aged 18 to 25. We paired them with catechists with decades of experience, hoping that both groups could learn from one another while together offering an enriched catechetical experience to those preparing to receive their sacraments.
By the grace of the Spirit and the dedication of our team, this arrangement was effective. It was not, however, without its challenges. Some young people often found their roles reduced to logistical tasks—setting up chairs, passing out materials and speaking to the group in minor roles—while never being invited to cast a vision or take a more direct lead. Others brought forth ideas or proposed changes to their more experienced counterparts only to be met with skepticism or an assurance that “this is the way we have always done it.”
Since my time in the parish, I have heard countless stories from young people who felt limited by those who could have instead fanned their ministerial zeal and stretched their capacities to new dimensions. This phenomenon is not exclusive to Hispanic communities, yet it seems heightened among Latinos.
In other cases, the problem is not limitation but rather discouragement. A first-generation immigrant Catholic may hear a second- or third-generation young person beginning their ministry speak imperfect Spanish, resorting to English so often that they begin to approach full-on Spanglish, and may respond with a chastisement or a disapproving comment about such mixing of this young person’s two languages.
This reaction misses that the mixing of languages is an accurate representation of the young person’s own identity—two cultures, backgrounds and sets of experiences ever blending and intertwining in one. It risks alienating young people who might not come back (either to the parish or to ministry) because in their moment of vulnerability, they were shamed or belittled instead of encouraged. Still other times, the discouragement can come from an overemphasis on vocations to the priesthood and vowed religious life, so that young men and women begin to perceive these as the only feasible paths to ministry. The idea that one serves God and others mainly as a priest or as a consecrated person, deeply ingrained in the Hispanic Catholic imagination, can become yet another barrier for young people discerning how to serve and lead in the church.
For the young Latinos and Latinas who do discern this call and step into it, they are often the youngest person in the room, operating from a distinct life experience and a different understanding of what it means to be church than those who have been leading for years. They profess the same faith but have come to live it and understand it differently because of the generational and cultural divides, and these young ministers-in-the-making can feel discouraged when their fresh energy, zeal and ideas are met with hesitation or resistance in favor of the way things have always been done.
No Longer an Immigrant Church
Hispanic ministry in the United States has long been tailored to the needs and experiences of first-generation immigrants, and rightly so. Foreign-born Latinos and Latinas were the main source of growth in the U.S. Hispanic population for much of the 20th century, and the church accompanied them by creating Spanish-speaking ministries and resources. This was a great gift then and it continues to be a gift today. Catechesis, family ministry, Bible studies and lay movements in Spanish are an essential component of the Catholic Church in the United States, which is about 40 percent Hispanic today (and that proportion is climbing by the year).
Yet Hispanic population growth (which itself accounts for over half of the total U.S. population growth in the last 15 years) is now driven significantly more by those born in the United States than by first-generation immigrants. This has been the case since the early 2000s. Today 94 percent of Hispanics under the age of 18 are U.S.-born.
They speak mainly English and Spanish to varying degrees; most are bilingual. Many of them have grown up feeling caught between two worlds, accustomed to pressure from both ends and sensing the danger in straying too far in either direction at the wrong moment. Dress a certain way or play the wrong playlist around their cousins and suddenly they’re “whitewashed.”
If they accidentally drop some Spanish words into an English sentence, they are simply trying too hard to be Latino. Slip up in their Spanish and they’re a “no sabo kid,” a pejorative term for children of immigrants who are less fluent in the language. Conversely, some young Hispanics are tempted to tone down or check their Latinidad at the door in white-dominated contexts, such as their classroom, their university dorm or their corporate job. Hispanics are expected to be proud of their culture but also to express it in precisely the right way to precisely the right degree, lest they suffer the judgment of their extended family, coworkers or peers.
Young Latinos feel the tension between the traditional Catholic faith of their Hispanic parents and the secularized, modern culture that has largely suffocated the role of religious practice or become antagonistic against it. They are disaffiliating from the Catholic Church in increasing numbers, often citing a gradual drift from Catholicism—a slow arrival at the conclusion that the religious practices they had received are now irrelevant to their lives.
Most who disaffiliate from the Catholic Church do so in their teen years. Especially among young people, we are well past the time when one could safely assume Hispanics were Catholics. The 2024 Religious Landscape Study by the Pew Research Center found that 42 percent of all U.S. Hispanics were Catholic; in 2023, Pew reported that among those aged 18 to 29, only 31 percent were Catholic, compared with 49 percent who self-identified as unaffiliated. Combined with the ongoing Hispanic population growth, this has created a dynamic in which the U.S. Catholic Church grows more Hispanic while Hispanic young people are becoming less Catholic.
Not every Catholic pastoral leader serving young Catholics in the United States seems to be fully aware of these facts. The conversation about the formation of young Catholics has yet to account adequately for the seismic demographic shift embodied by Hispanic Catholics, who will soon be the majority within the U.S. Catholic population and already constitute the majority among Catholics under 18.
The U.S. young Catholic experience and Latinidad are deeply intertwined. The theologian Hosffman Ospino of Boston College reminds us that “to speak of Hispanic ministry in the United States practically means to speak of youth and young adult ministry.” But many ministerial efforts in our church limit “Hispanic ministry” simply to ministry in Spanish.
The Hispanic Catholic population is still too often painted with one broad brush, as people fail to recognize important differences between the experiences of Hispanics who are immigrants and those who are U.S.-born or U.S.-reared (to say nothing of the rich diversity of the many cultures present within the Hispanic population). As a result, the church provides gravely impoverished ministerial offerings that leave out talented young leaders it might otherwise develop. If we hope to foster the many gifts young people offer their communities and the larger church, we must first better understand who our young Hispanic Catholics are and respond creatively to the new era they are ushering in.
As director of Haciendo Caminos, I heard the stories of young adult Hispanic Catholics from all over the country. Co-led by Boston College and the University of Notre Dame, Haciendo Caminos is a collaborative effort on behalf of 18 Catholic universities, all dedicated to identifying and supporting the next generation of Catholic ecclesial leaders working in Hispanic communities.
During the summer of 2025, I had the privilege of accompanying 30 Haciendo Caminos fellows, master’s-level graduate students currently receiving formation in theology and ministry. All were U.S.-born or U.S.-reared Hispanics. We gathered in San Antonio with a team of some of the leading Hispanic theologians and ministers in the United States, and our days were filled with lively discussion, fellowship and prayer.
Their stories inspired me and reminded me that young Hispanic Catholics are resilient, dedicated and hardworking. More important, the students edified one another and found community in their shared experiences. Many echoed the pressures of being children of immigrants. They were master code switchers, fluent in both Hispanic and American cultures, and disciples of Jesus committed to serving God and his church. Their joy was contagious, despite the countless struggles they were facing individually and communally.
Fellows at the symposium were asked what topics they would like to discuss, and their responses were telling. The six small topic groups that emerged from their requests focused on: diversity, how to minister to peers, power dynamics, pathways for lay ministers, mental health and L.G.B.T.Q. accompaniment. Mental health and L.G.B.T.Q. accompaniment were far and away the most important concerns, according to the symposium participants.
This simple exercise demonstrates much of the ongoing struggle for the church to understand our young Latino Catholics. If this same question were posed to the vast majority of ecclesial leaders now engaged in Hispanic ministry, the results would differ greatly, given the fact that most work with Hispanic immigrants.
Different Questions From Youth
If we hope to engage young people, we must ask: Are we trying to provide answers to questions they are not asking, or are we listening to them? The reconfiguration of Hispanic ministry that is demanded by the present moment is not one of either/or. It is both/and. We must continue to accompany and serve first-generation Hispanics while recognizing that U.S.-born youth and young adult Hispanics have different questions, desires and drives.
Pope Francis hailed the presence of our jóvenes in the exhortation “Christus Vivit”: “Youth is a blessed time for the young and a grace for the church and for the world. It is joy, a song of hope and a blessing.” Within the United States, the transformation our young Latino Catholics are leading is a particular cause for hope.
Those in Hispanic ministry often talk about the U.S. Hispanic community as gente puente, or bridge people. The younger generations of Latinos embody this more than anyone. They bridge their Latino and American cultures; the work ethic and grit of their immigrant parents to holistic self-care that prevents burnout; the pre-internet world to modern social media and artificial intelligence; tradition and respect for authority to innovation and synodality; theology to its concrete implications in a justice-starved world.
Compelled by their faith, rooted in reverence and gratitude for the spirituality and traditions they have received as a gifts from past generations, they are not only confronting issues that for too long have been avoided, like mental health, abuse and traumas in Hispanic families; they are precisely the ones leading these conversations.
What can we as a community of faith do to better accompany and see our young Latinos and Latinas reach their leadership potential? The answers will need to vary according to local context; there is no one Hispanic American experience. Nonetheless, certain central themes inevitably arise when speaking to jóvenes about their experiences in the church, and these can guide concrete next steps.
Young Hispanic Catholics need to be given agency within their own formation journey, including the language in which they receive religious education. As one catechist recently lamented to me, “I frequently have teens in my confirmation class who definitely should not be in a Spanish-language group, but being underage, their parents were the ones who made that decision. They want their kids to learn to pray in Spanish, though the practical result is a frustrating, checked-out catechesis experience for them.”
Parents’ efforts to make sure their children know Spanish are commendable, but spiritual formation is the wrong arena in which to prioritize this. What is at stake in our youth’s formation is nothing less than the life that Christ extends through the hearing and accepting of the kerygma. Our job is to remove obstacles to reaching that end, not add more.
Agency must extend beyond language. Young people ought to be given the freedom to name the topics that matter to them. The breakneck pace of technological advancement necessarily means our teens’ and young adults’ experiences are markedly different from those who came even a few years before them. One teenager in my family pointed out to me that in an effort to seem relatable, catechists and pastoral leaders sometimes assume they already know what the struggles are in the lives of young people. This backfires either from simple inaccuracy or because it lacks the essential listening and relationship-building components of ministry.
Instead, the teen I spoke with wishes young people could more often name for themselves the particular pain points of their life within a trusted, comfortable environment. Beyond formal catechesis, parish or campus outreach events should also allow young people to answer the basic question: What is going on in your world at the moment that most concerns or interests you?
Communities would do well to audit their ministries to consider where young people are present and where they are not. Young people often feel limited to certain ministerial and ecclesial roles. Can parishes instead encourage the inclusion of young people in every one of their ministries, both liturgical and nonliturgical?
Even among those heavily involved in ministry, jóvenes often report an experience of coasting within their roles. Instead of being stretched and trusted with new leadership roles, they are kept where they are safe. Countless future leaders sit in the pews, falsely believing they are not needed right now, and others are fulfilling the same secondary roles they have practiced for years because no pastoral leader has entrusted them with leadership. Some have a call to formal theological and ministerial formation that has remained dormant for lack of direct encouragement.
In Hispanic communities especially, we must resist a tendency to not only neglect care for mental health, but even to demonize it. Despite skyrocketing rates of anxiety and depression among the youngest generations, many Hispanic Americans struggle to name their mental health battles within their families or faith communities because it is a taboo subject. Others have become tired of those older than them responding to their traumas, wounds, depression and anxiety by instructing them to simply pray it away instead of seeking therapy, counseling or other professional help. If our jóvenes are to embrace and one day lead the Catholic Church, we must encourage spiritual well-being as one component of their human flourishing, not treat it as the only one.
Above all, we must listen to our young people. Teaching is an essential role of the church, but teens and young adults have experienced the ineffectiveness of those who teach and minister with haste rather than first listening attentively, genuinely and patiently. Humility and curiosity break down walls previously erected by judgment or neglect. A little goes a long way, especially for second- and third-generation Latinos, who are rarely invited to speak openly about their experiences.
Catholic ministry is not limited to religious education in parishes and schools, and it is our young people who are seeing the need to expand ministerial horizons, including and especially where it may be uncomfortable and pressing to do so. With our support, they will blaze new ministerial trails to address care for creation, global and national migration movements, engagement in public life, engagement in the digital world, accompaniment of the sick and imprisoned, defense of human life from conception to natural death, development of synodal structures, new forms of catechesis, marriage and family ministry, and mental health grounded in Catholic spirituality and beyond. In doing so, they will glorify God and bring forth eternal fruits for his kingdom. I can think of no more worthy an end to our parents’ journeys and sacrifices.
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