MTSM, Archdiocese Center for the New Evangelization Hosts Encuentro

On March 21, the seminarians of Mount St. Mary’s Seminary & School of Theology joined the Archdiocese of Cincinnati’s Center of the New Evangelization (CNE) to host ‘Encuentro’ in the Chapel of St. Gregory the Great.

‘Encuentro’, Spanish for ‘encounter’ is a similar event to the bi-annual event ‘Behold’, which the CNE and MTSM seminarians join in to host, in which it features a Holy Hour with adoration, music and a homily, followed by a reception for guests to get to know each other. The difference with Encuentro, as demonstrated in the name, is that it is fully in Spanish.

“There is a growing need in the Archdiocese for clergy who can do Hispanic ministry,” Deacon Curtis Gross, a seminarian for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, said. “That not only takes the form of being able to say the Mass in Spanish, but also do things like Holy Hours, preaching and being able to hear confessions. In addition, there are a lot of different dialects within the language that make it a daunting challenge, but it is important to be able to receive these people with their different stories and issues. A lot of us here in the Seminary are working hard to be able to extend the olive branch to these people and help them encounter the faith.”

Deacon Gross served as the presider for the evening, and while his surface background of being a non-native speaker from Loveland might not shoot him up the qualifications list, he has taken to Spanish ministry seriously as something valuable and important to his upcoming priestly ministry.

“Growing up, I had a pretty normal track of Spanish, having it for two years in high school and two years in college,” Deacon Gross recalled. “In a classroom setting, there is a limit to how much you can learn. You come in for an hour each day, the other 23 hours you are back to English.”

Through the recommendation of the Formation Team at MTSM, Deacon Gross was selected for a Spanish immersion program sponsored by the Archdiocese of Cincinnati to spend two months in Mexico, near where Rev. Uriel Santos (a 2022 MTSM graduate and Parochial Vicar at the St. Michael the Archangel Family of Parishes) grew up.

“It was two months of not being able to use English unless you were calling home,” Deacon Gross remembered. “If you had a problem, you had to figure it out in Spanish. If you wanted to communicate with someone, it had to be in Spanish. But it worked, by the end I would have times when in my dreams, I was communicating with people in Spanish.”

All MTSM seminarians take courses working towards ministerial competency (knowledge of Spanish sufficient to celebrate the sacraments) which includes up to eight credit hours of Pastoral Spanish courses. In addition to that, Deacon Gross credits the chance to bond and learn with native-Spanish speakers, which currently includes Deacon Bryan Ilagor and Mateo Perez, both seminarians from the Diocese of Charlotte.

“It is important to find ways to have conversations with Spanish speakers to help continue to improve,” Deacon Gross remarked. “With Mateo and Bryan, sometimes when we are at the lunch tables or walking down the hallways, I’ll ask them to have a conversation in Spanish.”

Encuentro is one small way that the Center for the New Evangelization and MTSM are reaching out to the Hispanic community.

The Archdiocese did a lot of work to help get people out,” Deacon Gross observed. “I think we all came out of this event realizing how much energy there is in the Hispanic community.”