New director for diocesan youth ministry office

Friday, Jan. 27, 2017

SALT LAKE CITY — Since Junuee Castro became the Diocese of Salt Lake City’s director of the Office of Youth and Young Adult Ministry in November, she has been learning about the diocese and meeting those with whom she’ll be working.

As she travels to parishes, she has been listening to the needs of youth ministers and pastors, she said.

 If a parish has an established program that is working, she said, her question then is, “How else can we work together? How else can we build community and how else can we come together as a diocese and in the future have a diocesan conference, a diocesan youth retreat … bring the entire youth community together?”

The biggest challenge she faces is the need for resources, especially money, she said. For example, many diocesan youth want to attend national conferences – the youth day at the annual Los Angeles Religious Education Conference and the Steubenville Conference, which is held at various locations, are particularly popular – but they can’t afford the trip.

“It’s something that they want to experience, but yet we have to say ‘no’ because we don’t have the resources, and if we do it for one we have to do it for the rest,” she said.

Nevertheless, she believes that part of her job is to “let them know that … maybe I can’t give you money but there are other resources at the office that I can offer” such as training and formation, said Castro, who came to the United States from Mexico with her family when she was about 9 years old.

Castro, whose first name means “half-moon,” has worked in the field of youth ministry for more than 10 years. She began as a volunteer with her parish in Arizona. Deciding she needed to learn more, she began a two-year formation program for lay ministers in her diocese.

Once she was certified through that program, she went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts in Pastoral Ministry with a concentration in catechetics from the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, where she took additional classes at the Mexican American Catholic College and worked for the Congar Institute for Ministry Development.

The Congar Institute, which works with dioceses to form lay pastoral leaders, has an ongoing relationship with the Diocese of Salt Lake City. People from the institute have worked on the diocesan Pastoral Plan and provided many resources for the Lay Ecclesial Minster Formation programs in both English and Spanish.

While discerning what education would best help her ministry, Castro originally focused on catechesis, because “it is key to every ministry that you do,” she said. 

Now she is enrolled in a master’s program in pastoral studies at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, where she worked as the department initiative coordinator for the archdiocese. 

While working for the Congar Institute, Castro became familiar with the Utah diocese, she said, so when the position in the youth ministry came open here, she applied.

Castro’s educational background and the fact that she is bilingual English/Spanish made her an excellent candidate for the position, said Monsignor Colin F. Bircumshaw, diocesan administrator.

Castro’s theology training will be very helpful in her new position, agreed Susan Northway, the diocesan director of religious education, because “youth and young adult ministry is more than just picnics and talk and so on. You have to have solid catechesis with it.” Castro, she added, “is driven by her call to share her faith, and she’s discerned this deeply over time.”

As the office director, she is looking forward to “being able to work closely with people, and build that relationship with people, with youth ministers, with youth leaders, with pastors, with the community itself. I think that’s fundamental,” said Castro, who is planning to have a youth conference in conjunction with the annual diocesan Pastoral Congress in the fall.