Opening School Doors To Hispanics

A campaign launched on Dec. 12 to enroll one million Hispanic students in Catholic schools by 2020 and the study that prompted it are “a challenge to the church to get the word out and spread the good news in the Hispanic community,” said Auxiliary Bishop Thomas J. Curry of Los Angeles, head of the Committee on Catholic Education, in a statement on Dec. 15. “As in the past, Catholic schools are a gift to the Catholic immigrants to America. We rejoice in and celebrate that fact,” Bishop Curry said. The Catholic School Advantage campaign comes out of a 65-page report, “To Nurture the Soul of a Nation,” released on Dec. 12 by a task force commissioned by the University of Notre Dame. A key finding of the report showed that while more than 75 percent of Latinos in the United States are Catholic, only 3 percent of Latino children currently attend Catholic schools, while public schools across the country have seen a rapid growth in the number of Hispanic students.