Honoring our Latina mother | News | Notre Dame News | University of Notre Dame Skip To Content Skip To Navigation Skip To Search University of Notre Dame Notre Dame News Experts ND in the News Subscribe About Us Home Contact Search Menu Home › News › Honoring our Latina mother Honoring our Latina mother Published: December 12, 2011 Author: Michael O. Garvey The Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe falls on Monday (Dec. 12), agreeably apposite to recent activities of Notre Dame’s scholars and administrators. The feast celebrates the 16th century apparition of the pregnant, Nahuatl-speaking Virgin Mary and the vibrant image she left behind. Her image, enshrined at the site of the apparition in what is now Mexico City, is venerated particularly in Latin America, but ubiquitously in the western hemisphere, including in the western apsidal chapel of Notre Dame’s Basilica of the Sacred Heart, where a rendition painted by Maria Tomasula, the Michael P. Grace Professor of Art, was installed three years ago. The Hispanic and Latino Catholic bishops of the United States appealed to Our Lady of Guadalupe in a pastoral letter to the country’s undocumented immigrants issued last Friday (Dec. 9), urging them to remember that she “constantly repeats to us the words she spoke to St. Juan Diego, ‘Am I, who am your mother, not here?’” The bishops’ letter, which insists that American laws “should include a program for worker visas that respects the immigrants’ human rights, provides for their basic needs and ensures that they enter our country and work in a safe and orderly manner,” cites and makes use of recent scholarship by Rev. Daniel G. Groody, C.S.C., associate professor of theology and director of the Center for Latino Spirituality and Culture at Notre Dame. The letter urged that all consideration of immigration keep in mind the Gospel admonition of Jesus, that “I was hungry and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me to drink; I was an alien and you took me into your house.” This strikes Rev. Joseph V. Corpora, C.S.C., who served as a pastor for 19 years in Catholic parishes in Arizona and Oregon, as good advice. “In both parishes there were many undocumented people, and I think that I dealt with the question of undocumented people in one way or another every day of those 19 years. They are truly the poor among us. They hope that the Church will speak for them and be their advocate, like Our Lady of Guadalupe was for Juan Diego and continues to be today.” At Notre Dame, Father Corpora directs the Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) Catholic School Advantage Campaign, an effort to increase the percentage of Latino children enrolled in Catholic schools. The campaign, whose consultants are now active in seven Catholic dioceses, hopes to double the percentage of Latino children enrolled in Catholic schools – from 3 to 6 percent – in the next 10 years, raising the number of Latino children enrolled in Catholic schools from 290,000 to 1 million by 2020. In frequent addresses to Catholic pastors, teachers and school administrators nationwide, Father Corpora draws from his own extensive pastoral experience as he lists recommendations for increasing Latino enrollments. In addition to his noteworthy admonition to patronize Mexican restaurants and to “order tamales regularly,” these vary from learning Spanish, and including its use in liturgical celebrations to deeper engagement in Latino communities and the incorporation of Hispanic cultural events and feasts into school calendars. But invariably, Father Corpora advises that pastors “make a novena to Our Lady of Guadalupe. If we are successful in this effort, it will be due in large part to her guidance and intercession.” Father Corpora believes that a successful outcome to the Catholic School Advantage Campaign would have numerous desirable outcomes for Latino children and families and for the nation’s academic and social future. A man whose conversation is composed in equal parts of affability and bluntness, he summarizes the campaign’s urgency: “Without Catholic schools, we will not have a Church. Without Latinos in our Catholic schools, we won’t have schools. So as the students say in the dorm (Dillon Hall) where I live, ‘Go figure.’ I’ve often thought that Latinos might even be God’s last-ditch effort to keep the American Catholic Church truly catholic, sacramental and diverse.” In that effort, his mother, however named—Notre Dame, Our Lady, Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe, Our Lady of Guadalupe—will continue to have a large part. Posted In: Faith Home Experts ND in the News Subscribe About Us Related October 03, 2022 dCEC to Award 2023 ND Evangelium Vitae Medal to Robert P. George September 22, 2022 In memoriam: Rev. Richard Warner, C.S.C., longtime leader for Notre Dame, Congregation of Holy Cross September 15, 2022 In new book on global Catholicism, Provost John McGreevy explores modern history, current challenges of the Church September 15, 2022 Death penalty abolitionist Sister Helen Prejean to speak at Notre Dame September 14, 2022 Apostolic nuncio to Great Britain to deliver the 2022 Keeley Vatican Lecture For the Media Contact Office of Public Affairs and Communications Notre Dame News 500 Grace Hall Notre Dame, IN 46556 USA Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube Pinterest © 2022 University of Notre Dame Search Mobile App News Events Visit Accessibility Facebook Twitter Instagram YouTube LinkedIn