I am excited about a piece of news I received last night from Robert Aguirre, the president of CALL, the Catholic Association of Latino Leaders. This is the organization I mentioned yesterday in this column whose leaders are currently in Rome for a meeting with curial officials and for very special event that will take place tomorrow at the weekly general audience.

Three CALL members will come to my home for lunch after the audience and I will also interview them for “Vatican Insider,” letting them tell you about their association and the reason they are in Rome. My new friends are Robert Aguirre, president and CEO of CAL, Jose Gonzales and Fr. Matthew Munoz, a priest in Los Angeles.

I met the CALL leaders Sunday after Mass at Santa Susanna where Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles was the main celebrant. As I noted earlier, Archbishop Gomez is one of the three bishop founders of CALL and has been in Rome with a pilgrimage from San Antonio, Texas where he was archbishop before being named to L.A. by Pope Benedict. After Mass, and later that night over dinner, we spoke about CALL and the special project that brought them to Rome.

Last year, a number of CALL leaders had a series of meetings at the Vatican with various officials of the Roman Curia, intending, among other things, to start a discussion about Hispanic Catholic influence in the United States and in the Church in the U.S. One of the curia officials whom they met in 2010 was Cardinal Peter Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. At one point their conversation turned to Pope Benedict’s encyclical, “Caritas in Veritate.” Cardinal Turkson, when asked for reaction around the world to the encyclical, remarked that Popes produce encyclicals but rarely does the Vatican does not get a response to them.

That comment set the CALL officials and members to thinking.

Their response, after a year of careful, prayerful work, writing, re-writing and input from CALL founders, will be given to Pope Benedict tomorrow at the weekly audience. They will present the Holy Father with a white leather-bound copy of “Caritas in Veritate – Charity in Truth: Our Response in Faith” - CALL - Catholic Association of Latino Leaders.

Last Thursday, Robert Aguirre, Fr. Munoz, Jose Gonzales and Jose Ambrozic, a CALL member from Allenspark, Colorado met with Cardinal Turkson. CALL presented the cardinal with a copy of their response as they had decided he should be the one to present the document to Pope Benedict. However, after careful thought, Cardinal Turkson felt that CALL leaders should personally give it to the Pope and so it was arranged. Five cardinals who met with and assisted CALL members will receive copies of their Response document.

In Cardinal Turkson’s office (l-r): Jose Ambrozic, Jose Gonzales, Robert Aguirre, Cardinal Turkson, Fr. Munoz and Archbishop Gomez.

So far I have read only a small portion of CALL’s Reponse but, as Robert Aguirre told me over dinner, “it reads almost like a prayer.” It is CALL’s reflection on the importance of Pope Benedict’s teaching in Caritas in veritate and a promise to be faithful stewards, disciples and teachers of his word, not however, as just the Latino community, but as the wider community of believers.

Write to Joan at:
joansrome@ewtn.com 

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