V Encuentro Proceedings and Conclusions

Proceedings and Conclusions of the V National Encuentro of Hispanic/Latino Ministry | 37 T aking up the call of Pope Francis in Evangelii Gaudium for the Church to “go forth and preach the Gospel to all: to all places, on all occasions, without hesi- tation, reluctance or fear” ( EG 23), the con- sultation process of the V Encuentro began in 2017 by commissioning and accompany- ing missionary disciples in their visits to the peripheries of their communities. Through the visits, the participants in the V Encuentro gained valuable insights into the lives, hopes, dreams, obstacles, and needs of Hispanics/ Latinos who in many cases have lost touch with the pastoral care of the Church. Their voices and concerns were collected, summa- rized, and reported at the parish, diocesan, and regional levels through their respec- tive Working Documents. It has never been the task of the delegates to alter or add to those voices—all they could do was include the insights and concerns in each Working Document so that they might inform and guide the deliberative conversations that would take place at each Encuentro . In preparation for the V National Encuentro, a summary was prepared describing what was heard throughout the country in the hun- dreds of thousands of missionary visits to the peripheries. That summary is reproduced in its entirety here. It is important to understand that the concerns and insights contained in this section are not doctrinal statements. Nor do they form a pastoral plan or dictate any particular course of action on the part of the Church at any level. However, it is certainly the task of the Catholic Church in the United States to give due consideration to what was said and what was heard, discerning in a spirit of pastoral conversion (see EG , 25-33) how to respond and where to start. The information contained in this section rep- resents a summary of the corresponding sec- tions of the Regional Working Documents, which in turn gave summaries of the Diocesan and Parish Working Documents, ultimately leading back to the reports provided in the consultation forms by the missionary disciples Echoes of the Encounters in the Peripheries