Immigrants bring fervor, family to parish

Claudia Jaquez carries a cross at the beginning of a Palm Sunday Mass at Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary Church. The Chihuahua, Mexico, native has been a member of the West Side parish for five years. Immigrants comprise about a third of the 2,500 families registered at Holy Rosary. (Adolphe Pierre-Louis/Journal)

One West Side Catholic church has a welcome problem this Easter season.

In May, Our Lady of the Most Holy Rosary parish will offer first Holy Communion to about 190 children ages 7 to 9 of whom 130, or more than two-thirds, are the children of Spanish-speaking immigrant families.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do with them all,” said Sister Evangeline Salazar, who oversees religious education at Holy Rosary.

The church plans to handle the bumper crop by holding first Holy Communion in eight Masses over three consecutive weekends, she said.

“The immigrants are going to carry the church, because the Americans are just falling off the pews, so to speak,” she said. Young people in particular are shunning the church. “But all the Mexicans and Latinos that are coming into this country are filling the pews.”

Salazar’s words were evident on the Thursday evening before Holy Week as 130 families, including hundreds of children from infants to teenagers, swarm the hallways and classrooms at Holy Rosary’s Family Center.

Immigrant families come here each Thursday to attend Spanish-language religious education classes and grupo de oración, an exuberant prayer meeting with a strong charismatic flavor, complete with song, shouts and laying-on of hands.

“We are very fervent,” said Julissa Gomez, who moved to New Mexico from Chihuahua 26 years ago and enjoys the Thursday night prayer meetings. Gomez has seen the immigrant congregation at Holy Rosary explode in recent years.

“They opened the doors to us,” she said.

Spanish speakers comprise about a third of the 2,500 families registered at the parish. Most come from Mexico with some from Central and South America.

Most of the growth has occurred since 1996 when Holy Rosary decided to attract immigrant parishioners by offering Spanish-language Masses and religious education.

Nationally, about a third of Roman Catholics are Hispanic, according to the Pew Research Center. Among younger Catholics, nearly half are Latino, Pew found.

“Faith means something to them,” Salazar said. “So they’re getting their kids baptized and receiving the sacraments. That’s what the immigrants are bringing back to the church, that need for sacraments.”

The church’s commitment to welcoming immigrants is a fulfillment of Easter’s lessons of sacrifice, renewal and hope, said Anna Marie Ulibarri, 60, an Albuquerque native and longtime parishioner at Holy Rosary.

The church’s message that it must welcome immigrants is hard to accept for some old-family New Mexico Hispanics who still comprise a majority of Holy Rosary’s congregation, she said.

“This week is about sacrifice,” Ulibarri said after attending Mass on Palm Sunday, which marks the beginning of Holy Week. “Inviting immigrants is an expression of sacrifice and service to others. This work truly defines who we are as a Christian people.”

Immigrants here say Holy Rosary is helping them build something new and important in their adopted nation.

“You feel like part of a family here,” said Beatriz Perez, 33, whose parents moved here from Chihuahua before her birth. Immigrants “bring their family unity to the church.”

The election this month of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina as the first Latin American pope and looming changes in U.S. immigration laws are hot topics here, and causes for hope.

“I am excited to have a Latino pope,” said Brenda Guerrero, 25, a native of Chihuahua who has lived most of her life in the U.S. “Maybe he can understand our culture?”

Guerrero obtained a green card last year after the Obama administration announced a policy in June that allows certain young undocumented immigrants to legally stay and work in the U.S.

“Most of these people are going to be American citizens,” Salazar predicted. “As a church, we have to provide for these people, because it takes awhile to learn the language and get into the culture of the Americans.”

Immigrants bring their own devotional style and enthusiasm to the Roman Catholic church, said Abbot Joel Garner, pastor of Holy Rosary and leader of the Norbertine Community of New Mexico, which oversees the parish.

“They bring a richness to us of faith and culture,” he said. “They’re bringing a whole cultural set into ours.”

Immigrants “are part of the family,” Archbishop Michael Sheehan said in a telephone interview. “We go out of our way to show concern and our love for them.”

That concern includes speaking publicly for legislation that favors immigrants. New Mexico bishops publicly oppose efforts to repeal the 2003 law that allows illegal immigrants to obtain New Mexico driver’s licenses and frequently call for federal immigration reform.

New Mexico is one of only two states to issue such licenses without proof of citizenship, and proponents of repeal say their efforts are aimed at public safety and compliance with federal law passed after 9/11. The state has become a magnet for fraud rings seeking licenses that serve as identification anywhere in the U.S.

“The immigrant community is important not only for the church but for the community at large,” Sheehan said.
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal