The New Bostonians by Marilynn S. Johnson

Author:Marilynn S. Johnson [Johnson, Marilynn S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SOC007000 Social Science / Emigration & Immigration
Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press

FIGURE 15. Father Fred O’Brien, the first director of the Hispanic apostolate in the Boston archdiocese, leads a class with Puerto Rican migrant workers at a farm in Concord in 1957. Photo courtesy of Boston Globe.

Outreach to Spanish-speaking migrants in the Boston Archdiocese first began in the 1950s, with the arrival of Puerto Rican agricultural workers in outlying communities. The church assigned Spanish-speaking priests to minister to these workers and set up community centers at local churches (fig. 15). As Puerto Ricans and Cubans settled in Boston’s South End, the Cathedral of the Holy Cross began offering a Spanish-language Mass, and in 1957 Cardinal Richard Cushing established the Hispanic apostolate to coordinate Spanish-language Masses and pastoral services. That same year the archdiocese also founded El Centro del Cardenal in the South End as a social service center for the city’s Latinos. Soon Spanish-speaking seminary students were working with Puerto Ricans at local parishes and staffing a travelers’ aid service at Logan Airport.4

Outside of the South End, though, the church’s response to new Latino arrivals was uneven at best. The first director of the Hispanic apostolate, Father Fred O’Brien, explained in a 1998 interview that the reception of Latinos depended mainly on the initiatives of local priests: “They left us on our own. Each city had a different experience. Priests working with Latinos were very creative. The Cardinal didn’t have a policy. . . . In this country, the hierarchy doesn’t know what to make of [Latinos] even now.” His successor in the 1970s, Father Daniel Sheehan, added that financial pressures on aging urban parishes also limited institutional support, and that “few in the Archdiocese were willing to promote Latinos and to be prepared for the future.” Nevertheless, local parishes responded piecemeal to the growing Latino population by adding Spanish Masses and clergy. In the 1980s, many became pan-Latino as new waves of Central Americans and Colombians arrived in the region. In 1988 the archdiocese appointed an auxiliary bishop, Roberto Octavio González, a Franciscan born in Puerto Rico, to represent the estimated 150,000 Hispanic Catholics in the region. By 2000, the Hispanic apostolate coordinated Spanish Masses and programs at thirty-six parishes in greater Boston.5

During these years, the Catholic Church extended a welcome to other migrants as well, including Haitians, Vietnamese, and Brazilians. Beginning in the 1960s, Haitian immigrants clustered around St. Leo’s and St. Matthew’s churches in South Dorchester and later expanded into St. Angela’s in Mattapan and Our Lady of Pity in Cambridge. Vietnamese refugees built a large congregation at St. Peter’s in Fields Corner, while the Allston-Brighton Vietnamese community attended St. Aidan’s in nearby Brookline. These and other immigrant congregations were placed under the supervision of the Office of Ethnic Apostolates, established by the archdiocese in the late 1980s.6

Over the next decade, the Office of Ethnic Apostolates would coordinate new ministries for Brazilians, Africans, and other groups as well. As Portuguese speakers, Brazilian newcomers sometimes found a home with existing Portuguese churches, but different worship styles and tensions rooted in past colonial relationships made some Portuguese parishes unwilling to host the newcomers.

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