From April 27-29 in Visalia, more than 20 bishops, including Bishop Jaime Soto, from throughout California, Nevada and Hawaii will lead delegations of Catholic leaders for the Pacific regional V (Fifth) Encuentro gathering at the Visalia Convention Center.
The regional Encuentro will convene more than 1,000 Hispanic ministry leaders/delegates from dioceses, ecclesial movements, schools, universities and Catholic organizations from the three states. The selected delegates representing 15 dioceses participated in the local process over the past two years.
Fifty-four delegates from the Diocese of Sacramento will be attending the regional Encuentro. The delegation includes of Diocesan Pastoral Center staff and representatives from Renovacion Catolica Carismatica Hispana, permanent deacons, Newman Catholic Center-CSUS, SEARCH, and St. John Vianney, St. Christopher and Our Lady of Guadalupe parishes.
The goal of the V Encuentro is to discern ways in which the church in the United States can better respond to the Latino Catholic community, strengthen the ways in which the local church responds to the needs of all the faithful, and empower the faithful to be leaders in their communities as missionary disciples.
Throughout 2017, local chapters of V Encuentro developed consultation and evangelization workshops with parish leaders, The national V Encuentro will be Sept. 20-23 in Grapevine, Texas. To read more about V Encuentro, visit https://www.scd.org/vencuentro and https://vencuentro.org/