Fr. Tim Howe, SJ, pastor of St. Procopius Church in Pilsen, a neighborhood on Chicago's southwest side with a huge Hispanic population, is one of a number of Jesuits missioned to Pilsen in response to the community's need.

This March I celebrate my 25th anniversary of ordination. Virtually all those years have been spent in some form of Hispanic ministry. As I look back I don't think my efforts were misplaced. All predictions made back then about how the Hispanic presence in Church and society was going to change the face of things in the United States have come true. Census figures tell us that one in every eight in the United States is Hispanic; they will soon surpass African Americans as the largest minority.

After Asians, Hispanics are the fastest-growing minority in the country; this is due as much to births as to immigration. They are also the youngest cohort in the population and the largest minority in states such as Texas, New York, New Jersey, and Florida.

In California they actually dropped from being the largest minority to being the second largest not because there are fewer of them but because Euro-Americans are now a minority with the combined numbers of Hispanics, Asians, and blacks constituting the new majority.

And mid America is now an important haven for the Hispanic community. The more than a million Hispanics who live in Chicago make it one of the five largest Hispanic regions in the country. Can anyone doubt that Hispanics-the new Americans and the new U.S. Catholics-are no longer just the future of the Catholic Church in this country? Isn't it time to admit that they are the present? They are helping change the face of U.S. Catholicism just as they are changing the face of the whole nation.

Their Catholicism is characterized by powerful symbols, rituals, and narratives, by a tragicomic vision of human existence, and by an engaging expressiveness and unstoppable sense of fiesta. They have substantial and original contributions to the great American experiment and to the Church as well.

What are the U.S. Jesuits doing about this emergent, new social and ecclesial scene? There is a lot to say. Thirty-five years ago the second language of U.S. Jesuits was either Latin, Greek, French, or German; today it is Spanish. Hundreds of U.S. Jesuits in pastoral and social ministries and education have taken up Spanish and gained this basic tool to know, love, reach out to, and serve Hispanics.

Significant numbers of Jesuits, probably the majority of the younger men in formation, have had cultural immersion experiences in Latin America. For several decades now there has been a core of U.S. Jesuit missionaries in Latin America. Some have returned to assume roles in Hispanic ministry in the States. More and more Jesuits have moved beyond the provincialism of U.S. culture and see the Society of Jesus, the Church, and the world itself with a new cross-cultural sensitivity.

On an organizational level, Jesuit ministries and institutions have opened their doors to new clientele. The Hispanic enrollment in many Jesuit high schools and universities continues to grow. Jesuit involvement in parish ministry over the past 25 years has often placed Jesuits in closer contact with Hispanics. Our Jesuit social ministries, including the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, have placed hundreds of enthusiastic young people in community organizations that serve the poor, among them many Hispanics.

As well, the work of community organizations like PICO, the Pacific Institute of Community Organizations, supported by Jesuits, has directly affected the lives of thousands of Hispanics by empowering them to resolve basic social needs. The majority of communities served by these organizations and the majority of the actual members are Hispanic. Take, for instance, the Orange County Congregation Community Organization (OCCCO) in California, part of the PICO network and its recent impressive, collaborative project to address the serious health needs of the 700,000 Hispanics in the county.

There are other trends in the Society's work with Hispanics: Jesuit provinces are moving in the direction of serious planning more than ever before in terms of recognizing the enormous Hispanic presence and its implications for every area of Jesuit involvement, from higher education to parish work. In Jesuit lingo one could say that they are serious about discernment-taking a long, hard look at reality and prayerfully deciding where the Spirit is leading.

Nationally, U.S. Jesuit provincials have supported the Cultural Institute for Leadership in the Midwest (ICLM), a collaborative project with the Mexican Province. This is the first time such a venture has taken place. The institute is serving several Midwest dioceses that otherwise would not have leadership formation resources for Hispanics. Also national in scope is the work that the Jesuit Refugee Service is doing with Hispanic refugees and immigrants at INS detention centers in El Paso and Los Angeles, where Fr. Rob McChesney, SJ, and a team work closely with scores of Hispanics, offering counseling, sacramental presence, and advocacy for the rights of detainees, many of whom come from Latin America.

On the provincial level, new efforts range from the New York Jesuits' Hispanic Lay Leadership Program that serves area dioceses with leadership and spirituality workshops, to the Chicago Province's Cristo Rey High School, Chicago's first new Catholic high school in many years. It was built in response to the need for Catholic secondary education in Pilsen, a predominately Hispanic section of the city.

A second major trend I see is the rise in collaboration between Jesuits and Hispanic laity who together grapple with the enormous challenge of Hispanic ministry. One such layperson is Dr. Fernando Guerra, head of Loyola Marymount University's Center for the Study of Los Angeles and an accomplished expert on Latino politics in Southern California. He links the university to Los Angeles's complex Hispanic communities and facilitates the university's many services to the community. Carmen Navarrete, another Hispanic collaborator, is a fund-raising associate at the Instituto Hispano of Loyola University Chicago's Institute for Pastoral Studies. The role of lay collaborators has been particularly effective at our high schools and we are looking for ways to make them successful in other ministries as well.

A third trend, the recent Nativity School initiatives, are among the more substantial developments in the ongoing story of Jesuit apostolates in the United States. These middle schools often serve Hispanic youth and exemplify what a relatively small number of Jesuits can do with the help of many lay coworkers to respond to the educational needs of the nation's burgeoning Hispanic population. The California Province in collaboration with the Diocese of San Jose will inaugurate the Sacred Heart Nativity School in the fall of 2001.

A fourth trend is in the area of Ignatian spirituality. Jesuits are finding ways to get the Spiritual Exercises out of traditional approaches and retreat-center settings and into the Hispanic community. New models for giving Spiritual Exercises are being pioneered in California by the Loyola Institute for Spirituality in Southern California. It has recently inaugurated its Latino Ignatian Team, fifteen men and women trained to work side-by-side with the institute's full-time staff in giving conferences, retreats, and spiritual direction in Spanish.

In New York, Fr. Jeff Chojnacki, SJ, codirector of the Hispanic Lay Leadership Program, is working with a team to introduce Ignatian spirituality to Hispanic communities by adapting the Exercises to new formats and bringing in Spanish-speaking experts on the Exercises. And in the Northwest, Fr. Chuck Schmitz, SJ, is pioneering a spiritual outreach to Hispanics in Washington's Yakima Valley.

A fifth trend that brings the Hispanic presence into the heart of our Jesuit enterprise is the growing involvement of Jesuits and their coworkers in issues of social justice, whether that be defending the dignity and rights of the unborn, immigrants and refugees, the homeless, the unemployed, workers, the imprisoned, the poor and the powerless; or standing up for the environment and opposing the manufacture and spread of weapons of mass destruction, war, and violence in all their forms. These are issues that intimately affect the lives of many Hispanics today.

From January 15th to the 18th, the Jesuit Hispanic Ministry Conference (JHMC) will gather at Mission San Luis Rey in Oceanside, California. JHMC, which has existed for more than twenty years, is made up of Jesuits from every U.S. province and from Latin America. The conference's agenda always includes an up-to-date assessment of Jesuit ministries with Hispanics. Undoubtedly they will see that the Hispanic presence continues to be one of the major signs of the times. While the past 25 years have seen many new developments, I expect even more as Jesuits and their growing number of lay coworkers respond to these opportunities as men and women for others.

God willing, the editors of Company will allow me to return on my 50th anniversary to continue these reflections on how the Hispanic presence gives new life to the Society of Jesus in the United States.

Fr. Deck, executive director of the Loyola Institute for Spirituality in Orange, California, first wrote for Company on Hispanic ministry in the Fall 1988 issue.