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Lia Garcia, director of Hispanic Ministry at the Archdiocese of Baltimore, speaks at a panel discussion exploring the impact of U.S. Latinos on the 2024 election hosted by Georgetown University’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life on Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. / Credit: Georgetown University/Art Pittman

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 10, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).

As a record number of Hispanic Americans will be eligible to vote this November, many are asking what impact Latinos — and Latino Catholics in particular — will have on the 2024 election.

Several Hispanic Catholic experts explored this question Monday night at a panel discussion hosted by Georgetown University’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life in Washington, D.C.

Though acknowledging the great diversity in culture and thought among American Hispanic communities, the panelists posited that the overarching values of family, faith, and care for the poor will factor largely into Latinos’ decisions at the ballot box this November.

“We are big on family, family values … We want to be welcoming and be very attentive to the needs of others,” said Lia Garcia, one of the panelists and the director of Hispanic ministry at the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

“We throw big parties, we eat a lot of food,” she added, laughing. “Everybody is invited to our gatherings, so our faith teaches us that we are built to be in communion in relationship with God and in relationship with one another.”

Hispanics don’t fit into a box

Speaking with CNA after the panel, Garcia said that in her work with Hispanic Catholics, she has heard “a lot of anxiety about what is going to happen” and “about who is going to win” the presidency.

She said that many Hispanic voters “feel pinned” between conflicting priorities held by Trump and Harris.

“They feel that they have to choose between the issue of abortion and defending immigrants,” she said. “Latino Catholics are very much for life. You can see that in our big families. But they also have a concern about the immigration issues. Even if immigration doesn’t directly affect them because now they’re documented, but they know someone, they know a family member, they know a colleague … it’s really scary to people how Latinos are portrayed to the rest of the world as criminals.”

Hispanic voters have historically favored Democrats in national and local elections. The panelists noted, however, that Republicans have been faring better with Latinos in recent elections and polls, giving credence to predictions that the Hispanic vote is no longer a monolith.

Recent polling on Hispanics backs up this theory. Newsweek reported this week that while Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is still leading among Hispanics by a wide margin, 56% to 38%, her lead has shrunk from the 59% Joe Biden held in 2020 and even further from the 66% held by Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Instead of loyalty to a party, panelists said Hispanics appear motivated mostly by their family values and concern for the poor and downtrodden.

Father Agustino Torres, a priest with the New York-based Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, said that in his ministry to young Latinos he has witnessed that Hispanic youth “have this fire” for caring for the downtrodden, especially for poor migrants.

“Sometimes we’re American Catholics rather than Catholic Americans. We allow our politics to inform our faith rather than our faith informing our politics,” Torres said. “But this is the reality: I’m responsible for you and you’re responsible for me. If I see someone falling down on the sidewalk, like, I am obligated because of my baptism, and this is a good thing … This is the Gospel.”

 “When we teach this, they are just like, ‘yes,’ and it unites their worlds, family, faith, outreach,” he said.

To be clear, like most Americans, U.S. Hispanics are most concerned with the economy. EWTN published a poll of U.S. Catholics in September that found that most of the country’s Hispanic Catholics — 56.8% — said the economy (including jobs, inflation, and interest rates) is the most important issue deciding their vote this election cycle.

The next-highest priorities were border security/immigration at 10.5%, abortion at 9.7%, health care at 5.3%, and climate change at 5%.

Yet, according to panelist Santiago Ramos, a Catholic philosopher at the Aspen Institute, even when it comes to their approach to economic issues, Hispanics do not easily fit into the political right or left.

Ramos said Hispanics challenge the “nationalist, right-wing” as well as progressivist categorizations.

“There is a community aspect to our existence, family-oriented, dare I call it socially conservative aspect to our existence that doesn’t always mesh with mainstream liberal institutions,” he explained. “So, there are all sorts of ways that we pop up in American politics and force people to see things they don’t want to see.”

Among new voters, Hispanics loom large

Aleja Hertzler-McCain, a reporter on Latino faith and American Catholicism for Religion News Service, pointed out that half of the new voters who have become eligible to vote since 2020 are Hispanic.

According to the Pew Research Center, there will be 36.2 million eligible Hispanic voters this year, up almost 4 million from 2020. While noting that U.S. Hispanics historically have low voter turnout, Hertzler said the sheer volume of new Hispanic voters could have a “big impact” on the election.

Whatever the outcome of the election, Garcia said she is “really excited” to see the Hispanic community have its voice heard in the democratic process.

“I can’t wait to see that. I’m really excited about the election for that particular reason,” she said.

“The beauty of our culture,” Garcia went on, “is we can draw from our own experiences growing up with big families, big celebrations, and also with our faith that draws us to relationship with one another. And I think that is where we can sense how [concern for] the common good is not only something that comes from God but comes from our culture as well.”

[…]

Washington D.C., Jul 24, 2018 / 05:08 pm (CNA).- Cardinal Theodore McCarrick is reported to have lived alongside a Maryland house of formation for members of a religious order whose founder has faced Vatican charges of sexual misconduct.

St. John Baptist de la Salle is located in Chillum, Md., adjacent to Washington, D.C. The parish is staffed by the Institute of the Incarnate Word (IVE), and the property serves as the headquarters of the community’s Province of the Immaculate Conception.

The Institute of the Incarnate Word was founded in 1984 in Argentina by Fr. Carlos Miguel Buela. In 2016, the Vatican affirmed the veracity of allegations that Buela engaged in sexual improprieties with adult seminarians of his community.

Buela, who retired in 2010, was forbidden by the Vatican from contact with members of the IVE, and from appearing in public.

In addition to the church building, the Maryland property includes two additional buildings, one of which is Ven. Fulton Sheen Seminary. The seminary forms men aspiring to be priests of the IVE, and opened in 1998. According to its website, the seminary currently houses 41 men in formation.

The third building, perhaps where the cardinal stayed, was not visible in a Google Street View Image dated July 2009, but had been constructed by May 2012.

Sources told CNA that Cardinal McCarrick lived with the IVE community at St. John Baptist de la Salle during his retirement, after residing for a period at the Redemptoris Mater Seminary of the Archdiocese of Washington.

One source close to the Archdiocese of Washington told CNA that the cardinal had for a time an IVE brother in formation living in his residence, which was on the parish property but separate from the house of formation.

An additional source also told CNA that McCarrick had young priest and seminarian assistants while living with the IVE, but did not comment on whether any seminarian resided with the cardinal.

An Archdiocese of Washington spokesperson did not confirm those reports. The spokesperson told CNA that Cardinal McCarrick “made his own living arrangements for his retirement,” as well as his own arrangements for secretarial assistance.

“I can’t comment on how long he was at the John Baptist de la Salle property,” the spokesperson added.

Cardinal McCarrick is reportedly close to the IVE, often conferring ordination for the Immaculate Conception province, doing so as late as May 28.

Directories from the Archdiocese of Washington demonstrate that Fr. Andrew Whiting, IVE, served as priest secretary to Cardinal McCarrick from at least 2014 through 2017. Whiting was ordained a deacon by McCarrick in 2013, and a priest in 2014.

The 2018 directory lists Br. Andy Kemtz, IVE, as secretary to the cardinal, and gives St. John Baptist de la Salle as his residence.

Cardinal McCarrick has been the subject of several accusations of child sexual abuse and sexual misconduct involving seminarians and priests in recent months.

He was suspended from exercising his ministry in June following an investigation into a charge of sexual abuse, and last week he was accused of the sexual abuse of a minor.

McCarrick was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of New York, and then served there as an auxiliary bishop.

He was bishop of two New Jersey dioceses before he was appointed Archbishop of Washington in 2000, where he served until his retirement in 2006.

In 2005 and 2007, two men received settlements from New Jersey dioceses over their abuse at the hands of McCarrick, who abused them while they were seminarians and priests.

The Institute of the Incarnate Word could not be reached for comment.

[…]

Juanje Garrido/Shutterstock

Washington D.C., May 6, 2021 / 08:15 am (CNA).
Swedish doctors will no longer prescribe hormones or drugs to halt or delay puberty for children under the age of 16 as part of gender-transitioning procedures. The … […]