“We Pray Our Lady Will Bring Us Together”: The Atlanta Archdiocese and Latino Immigrants

Despite a growing literature about the impacts of Latino immigration on the American South, few scholars have examined how immigrants have interacted with and transformed religious life in the Bible Belt. By analyzing the confusion that broke loose within the Atlanta Archdiocese’s leadership over the identity of and needs of a new immigrant population, this project uses religion as a lens through which to see the changes and challenges that have emerged in the South as a result of Latino immigration. The paper shows that the Atlanta Archdiocese imagined itself in the early 1980s as the most suitable home for Latin American immigrants and positioned itself to usher immigrants back into the Mother Church. In its letters to parish priests, Archdiocese leaders framed immigrants as members of a transnational Catholic community and called on local priests to graft immigrants into existing parish communities. This grafting was in line with the American Church’s longstanding policy of integration. However, no warm community-building resulted from the implementation of this policy. Instead, a slew of conflicts erupted. Archdiocese leaders argued about the place of origin and language abilities of Latinos; the winners of this disagreement held for most of the 1980s that immigrants were Cuban and bilingual, and therefore Spanish-language services were not of utmost importance. Latino parishioners resented their second-class position within parishes and argued that local priests were unwilling or unable to meet their needs. In the 1990s, when the Archdiocese began using traveling Spanish-speaking celebrants, priests accused the Archdiocese leadership of attempting to form a sinister “shadow Archdiocese” manned by money-grubbing celebrants who only served Latino parishioners. The paper argues that the Atlanta Archdiocese’s experiences showed the ways in which ignorance and infighting hampered the Southern Catholic Church’s efforts to bring Latino immigrants into its parish communities.