Diocesan director of youth ministry meets with Pope Francis

Friday, Sep. 27, 2019

SALT LAKE CITY — As part of a delegation of bishops and laypeople from the United States who recently traveled to Rome to share the results and recommendations of the Fifth National Encuentro, Junuee Castro, director of the Office of Youth and Young Adult Ministry, had the opportunity to represent the Diocese of Salt Lake City and all its people.

This is the first time a diocesan representative has had the opportunity to be in a delegation representing the encuentro and to meet directly with the pope.

The encuentro (Spanish for “encounter”) process began in the United States in 1972 to study pastoral care and accompaniment for Catholic Hispanic communities; an estimated 50 percent of Catholics under the age of 18 are Latino. In the past 47 years there have been five national Encuentro gatherings, the most recent of which was last September. That gathering, in Texas, focused on forming and inspiring missionary disciples. 

Castro said that being in front of Pope Francis was a blessing that she has no words to describe.

“It was just like feeling a huge peace. Nothing mattered. I couldn’t hear the thousands of people that were  at St. Peter’s Plaza. ... Peace,  joy and hope just flooded my being,” said Castro, who also got to give the Holy Father a hug. 

“It was a huge blessing, something indescribable ... and more because the pope just asked, ‘please pray for me,’” she said.

The U.S. delegation to the Vatican was led by Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of Los Angeles, vice president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops; and included Auxiliary Bishop Arturo Cepeda of Detroit, chairman of the subcommittee of Hispanic Affairs; Bishop Nelson J. Perez of Cleveland and chairman of the USCCB committee on cultural diversity in the Church; and Patricia Jimenez, communications coordinator for the V Encuentro. They and other members of the delegation, including Castro, met with Pope Francis on Sept. 18.

“First of all, it was very humbling and a great honor to be a Hispanic, a young woman  representing the diocese, and to see the hard work that many people have been doing to support the Hispanic ministry in the United States,” Castro said.

Seeing how people in the Vatican welcomed them and rejoiced at the results, recommendations and resources presented as a result of the Fifth National Encuentro process was acknowledgment that “we are on the right path, the encuentro will continue and there is still much more work, but we are being listened to,” she said.

The encuentro process practices what Pope Francis and the recent synods on the family and on young people have called for, which is more leadership by youth and laity and better formation of the laity.

The encuentro “is a process we have been doing for over 40 years in the Church. … It’s nothing new to Hispanic ministry, it’s just a new context and it also takes the work of Pope Francis in Aparecida, where he played a prominent role in 2007 in drafting a new pastoral vision for the Church in Latin American and the Caribbean,” Jimenez told Catholic News Service.

Aparecida is a town in Brazil; the name also refers to a document that came about after a conference of Latin American bishops met there in 2007, when Pope Francis was then Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The document has several key points aimed at keeping the Gospel message relevant in Latin America, including helping each person have a personal encounter with Christ and living simply and humbly, as taught in the Gospel. Since his election, Pope Francis has referred to the Aparecida document numerous times because it can be applied to the entire Church. 

At the Vatican, the delegation presented materials summarizing the results of the Fifth National Encuentro process. 

The presence of young Hispanics in the U.S. “is solid and it’s growing,” Castro said. The bishops “are seeing us as an asset and with an immense desire to serve the whole Church community and not just in youth ministry, in all of them. … And I feel that the youth and young adults are very present in the Church. We have lots and lots to offer. We just need that space to be listened to, and the pope listened to us and is listening to our voices.” 

Castro brought back the message that “despite all of the challenges that we are living, with DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals], the separation of the families, the undocumented people … we are being listened to. We have people who really care for all of us, who are speaking for the voiceless. … This trip has filled me with hope. We have to have hope, we have to keep on. During all those conferences and gatherings they kept on telling us, ‘Good job! Keep on going!’”