An Agenda Transformed

When Hurricane Mitch pummeled Central America, Louis Velasquez and his staff at the Office of Hispanic Ministry of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles helped families throughout Southern California pick up the pieces.

When a little boy called a Sunday morning radio program crying because he hadn’t heard from his grandmother in Honduras, Humberto Ramos, associate director of the office, stopped the tears by saying a prayer over the airwaves for the heavens to hear.

Coordinating disaster relief for Latin American immigrant families and using Spanish-language media to communicate with homebound Catholics are just two of the extra duties the Office of Hispanic Ministry has taken on in serving Southern California’s diverse Latino community.

Immigration has transformed the Los Angeles archdiocese, the nation’s largest with an estimated 4 million Catholics. A largely Latino population now fills its parishes, and instead of focusing on pastoral letters and religious programs, the Latino office has adopted an activist stance.

Far from stained-glass windows and confessional booths, the office has organized citizenship campaigns and voter registration drives and staged demonstrations for immigrant rights.

“The passage of Proposition 187 really marked a change in our office,” said Ramos, an immigrant himself, referring to the controversial ballot initiative that aimed to cut off most government aid for illegal immigrants.

“That stuff about the church just dealing with rosaries and Communion is old hat. We’re beyond that. This is a more mature view of religion. We realized that true religion is social responsibility,” Velasquez said.

When the office opened in 1973, the staff consisted of priests and nuns. Now, six socially conscious lay Latinos and one nun are headed by the gregarious Velasquez, the first director who is not a priest.

A visit to the Wilshire Boulevard office finds that white collars have been replaced by khakis and blue jeans. Cellular phones, beepers and e-mail keep the staff in close contact with the 287 parishes in the archdiocese. Lucy Boutee, who handles the 65 parishes in the San Gabriel region, said problems can range from clergy vacations to arguments with pastors.

“We put out a lot of fires,” she said. “Sometimes people call to ask about immigration; other times they feel like they just want to talk.”

The responsibilities of the office have evolved from serving parishioners in pews to elevating them to leadership positions, Velasquez said. But along with that change comes managing the conflicts as Latinos move from minority to majority. While in the past it was the Latino flock that was asked to follow, today those in power in the church carry a heavy burden of adapting to a changing church population.

“There are racists out there,” Velasquez said. “Our job is to convert them or if necessary do without them. Cardinal [Roger M.] Mahony has said that himself.”

The Latino ministry office was born in the heat of the 1960s Chicano movement. In 1969, Latinos staged several demonstrations demanding more attention from the archdiocese. The most dramatic incident occurred on Christmas Eve, when a group called Catolicos por la Raza stormed into St. Basil’s Church on Wilshire Boulevard during then-Cardinal Francis A. McIntyre’s midnight Mass and demanded an equal voice for Latinos in the archdiocese. Shortly afterward, McIntyre retired and was succeeded by Cardinal Timothy Manning.

Relations remained cool between Latino leaders and the archdiocese. When the Latino office opened in 1973, it “did not mean much,” said its first director, Father Peter Garcia. “I had no power to make decisions or implement policies. . . . The office was a nonaggressive, nonthreatening response to a delicate situation of the time.”

In the 1980s, the Latino population of the county grew, partly as a result of Central American civil wars. Father Anastacio Rivera was appointed to replace Garcia as the second director of the Latino office. Seeing the need for lay leaders, Rivera added Velasquez and Ramos to the staff.

Last year, Velasquez took over as director, with Ramos as associate director. Staff members Boutee, Heriberto Cayetano, Marco Ramirez, Jorge Rodriguez and Sister Antonieta Zapata are each assigned regions of the archdiocese to oversee.

Velasquez, former mayor of Fullerton, brought the political savvy that the office needed to survive in what many Latinos saw as an anti-immigration climate fostered by former Gov. Pete Wilson. Ramos, a former seminary student, balances the office equation.

“There is still tension between the Latino community and the archdiocese,” Rivera said. “Now I think we’ve moved from explosions of anger to the realization that there is a long road ahead and we have a lot of work to do.”